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PICTURE TOWNS 
OF EUROPE 



THE VILLAGE STREET 
CLOVELLY 


















PICTURE TOWNS 
OF EUROPE 



NEW YORK 

ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 

1923 


* ) 

> * > 
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.0(oT 

t>rv^ 

Copyright, 1912, By 

McBride, nast & company 


Revised Edition / 

Copyright, 1923, By 

ROBERT M. McBride & COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America. 


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©CU700209 



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/ 


TO THE LADY 
WHO DID NOT ALWAYS GO 




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P REFACE 

When I first went to Europe it was to 
begin a search that in all subsequent jour¬ 
neys I have continued to pursue, a search 
for the picturesque and the medieval. 

From the beginning I have been im¬ 
pressed with the lack of available informa¬ 
tion to guide the quest. There are hun¬ 
dreds of travel books concerning every 
land, and while many of them contain de¬ 
scriptions of beautiful towns and villages, 
there is no one book to which the traveler 
can turn to find something of what may 
be termed the ‘‘ picture towns of Eu¬ 
rope.’^ 

The choice I have made for this book is 
purely personal. I write of the places 
that most appeal to me, and while some of 
them are generally recognized by artists 
and authors as holding special and pecul¬ 
iar charm, there are others about which 
there may easily be lack of agreement. 

I hope the reader will bear in mind the 
distinction between a picturesque land- 

vii 


PREFACE 


• • • 

Vlll 

scape and a picturesque town, for it is not 
of the former that I am writing, else I 
should have gone into the Tyrol when 
writing of Austria, and possibly to Miirren 
when selecting a town to represent Switzer¬ 
land. 

My aim has been to select from each 
country in Europe, save the northern lands 
which I have yet to see, the towns that of 
themselves, and by their environment, as 
well as by something of the ancient life 
and tradition still surviving there, suggest 
most clearly to the present day the colorful 
and picturesque past. 

Albekt B. Osborne 





CONTENTS 


Clovelly . 

. England 

• 

PAGE 

1 

Mont St. Michel 

. France . 

• 

16 

Carcassonne 

. France . 


33 

San Gimignano . 

. Italy 


47 

Bussaco 

. Portugal 


68 

CiNTRA 

. Portugal 


83 

Toledo 

. jSpam 


100 

Ronda 

. Spain 


117 

Bruges 

. Belgium 


131 

Middelburg 

. Holland 


152 

Ragusa 

. Jugo Slavia . 


166 

Salzburg . 

. Austria . 


189 

Gruyeres . 

. Switzerland . 


204 

Rothenburg 

. Germany 

• 

219 

Hildesheim 

. Germany 

• 

230 


ix 







ILLVSTRATIONS 


CLOVELT.Y, ENGLAND 

THE VILLAGE STREET . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

THE TOWN AND ITS GREAT STONE QUAY 2 
AT THE FOOT OF THE VILLAGE . . 10 
ON THE WATER FRONT . . . .14 

MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 

THE PEAK OFF THE CORNISH COAST—ST. 

Michael’s mount .... 22 

THE NORMAN COUNTERPART OF ST. 

Michael’s mount—mont st. michel 26 


CARCASSONNE, FRANCE 

THE DREAM CITY . . . . 

A VISTA OF TOWERS 

THE CITY WITHIN . . . . 

SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL TOWERS . 
THE OUTSIDE WALLS 
AT THE WASHING POOL 
IN A BYWAY. . . . . 

BUSSACO, PORTUGAL 

THE ONE-TIME ROYAL PALACE 
A PORTUGUESE BEGGAR 
THE FOREST STAIRS 

CINTRA, PORTUGAL 

FROM THE MOORISH RUINS 
A WAYSIDE FOUNTAIN . 

THE MOORISH PALACE 

TOLEDO, SPAIN 

AN OLD GATEWAY . . . . 

A BRIDGE OVER THE TAGUS . 

THE BURDEN BEARER 


34 

38 

42 


48 

52 

58 

62 


*70 

74 

78 


86 

90 

94 


102 

106 

110 


XI 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


• • 

XU 

RONDA, SPAIN FACING 

A. SPANISH GATE. 

THE CATHEDRAL ..... 
IN A DOORWAY ..... 
THE OLD BRIDGE . . ' . 

BRUGES, BELGIUM 

A CITY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY . 

THE BELFRY . 

A LACEMAKER AT WORK 

MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND 

THE APPROACH TO THE TOWN 

THE TOWN HALL ..... 

YOUTHFUL HOUSEWIFERY 

RAGUSA, JUGO SLA VIA 

FROM THE HILLS ABOVE 

WITHOUT THE WALLS .... 
THE MARKET-PLACE .... 

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA 

THE HEART OF THE CITY 

THE CASTLE ABOVE THE CITY 

ON THE KONIGSEE .... 

GRUYLRES, SWITZERLAND 

THE MAIN STREET AND MARKET-PLACE 
OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS 
A GATEWAY ...... 

ROTHENBURG, GERMANY 

A BIT OF THE ANCIENT WALL 
THE PLONLEIN TOWER .... 
THE MARKUS TOWER .... 
THE RATHAUS ..... 

HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 

SOME OF THE ANCIENT HOUSES 

THE butchers’ GUILD .... 

THE ENTRANCE TO THE ANDREAS PLATE 

A MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION 
OF THE PICTURE TOWNS . 


PAGE 

118 

122 

126 

130 


134 

138 

146 


154 

158 

162 


166 

170 

186 


190 

198 

202 


206 

210 

214 


219 

222 

224 

228 


230 

240 

244 

PAGE 

247 


PICTURE TOWNS 
OF EUROPE 






CLOVELLY • ENGLAND 

Searching England for a place where 
time has stood still, I found it at Clovelly. 
Here lingers in the low, thatched cottages, 
and upon the ancient street, much of that 
quality of life that dominated England cen¬ 
turies ago. The life of to-day comes and 
looks in upon it as at a play, hut passes on, 
leaving no impress. In season the tourist 
toils up and down the single steep street 
that springs from the sea, and he takes his 
tea in the still little parlor of some fisher¬ 
man’s home opened as a tea room six 
months in the year. But the tourist is, 
after all, but an incident in the village life, 
not a factor in its development, for that life 
still retains the definite impress of those 

large, free days of Elizabeth.” 

I think the dominant note of any Eng¬ 
lish landscape is its humanness. There is 
a sense of its subserviency to human uses. 
It is livable, a place for homes and every¬ 
day cheerfulness and content. In no other 
land does the past seem so close, and its 
long-vanished generations of men so akin 
to us and so little alien to our mental at- 


1 


2 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


titudes. Perhaps this is because the old 
environment, the old accompaniment of 
life, which we still can see, seems so per¬ 
fectly fitted to our own manner of living. 
The hedge, the trees, the church spires, the 
thatched roofs, the flowers, the ancient 
ways, are clearly a part of to-day, and yet 
we know are practically unchanged from 
what they were when they were the back¬ 
ground for the lives of other times. And 
nowhere does this English characteristic 
more closely bring together medievalism 
and the present than in this little village of 
Clovelly. In short, Clovelly is the door 
through which you can come upon some¬ 
what of the past life of the English me¬ 
dieval village. 

The town has no parallel anywhere, and 
when you have seen it you have seen some¬ 
thing different, something no other land 
can show, but not only is it unique; it is 
conceded to be the most beautiful place in 
England. One writer sums up the con¬ 
sensus of opinion as follows: Clovelly is 
the most exquisite town in England . . . 
elsewhere there is nothing like it ... a 
scene more beautiful could not have been 
devised by the wit of man deliberately set 
to produce what is picturesque. . . . The 



THE TOWN AND ITS GREAT STONE 




























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CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 3 

village has grown along lines of perfect 
beauty. . . . Here is nothing, absolutely 
nothing, commonplace or ugly.^^ 

The reason for Clovelly’s unspoilt charm 
is found in its remote and isolated position. 
On the Devon shore of the Bristol channel, 
nearly a hundred miles west of Bristol, 
and about the same distance to the north of 
Plymouth, the two nearest ports, and ten 
miles from the railroad, the tides of life 
flow far away, so that, unsubmerged by 
the present, the past lives on. And even 
that past moved more peacefully here than 
elsewhere. To this far-off western coast 
there was little travel. The roads were 
exceedingly poor, and robbers lay in wait 
in the forest. Only the rich, who could 
afford a coach-and-four and armed retain¬ 
ers in sufficient numbers to repel attack, 
traveled by land. And there were no rich 
in this little fishing-village. In the neigh¬ 
borhood have lived for centuries three or 
four great families, but the men and women 
of Clovelly seldom left their homes by 
land. The channel offered a way to 
Bristol, and the life of Bristol and Clovelly 
always had much in common, but, while the 
hardy fearless fishers would go back and 
forth to Bristol, the open, wind-swept har- 


4 : PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


bor of Clovelly was in itself a barrier to 
intrusion, so its people have ever remained 
far from the stress of English history. 
But for eight hundred years the lure of the 
sea has been a compelling factor in the 
lives of the people. Away back in 1147 
men from Clovelly joined men from Bristol 
and crusaded to Portugal to rescue Lisbon 
from the Moors, and see the chaplain of 
their English fleet become the first Bishop 
of Portugal. And ever since, when British 
ships have put to sea in quest of battle, 
plunder or adventure, men of the Devon 
coast have been on board. Some sailed 
with Cabot from Bristol on his voyage that 
discovered North America, and tales are 
told of half-forgotten men that sailed away 
on fantastic errands, never to return. For 
through all the years Clovelly sails have 
longed for the wind of other seas, and to¬ 
day the young men are found as stewards 
on the great liners, as stokers in the hold, 
as sailors on the coasting-schooners, and 
as fishermen otf the shore. Clovelly’s 
whole world is the sea. 

But while Clovelly always had a certain 
independence of the conditions elsewhere 
prevailing in the island, its ways of life 
were, of course, more or less in common 


5 


CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 

with those of all medieval England. Here, 
as everywhere, life was picturesque but 
uncomfortable. Until well along in the 
Fifteenth Century the houses had no chim¬ 
neys. In the center of the ceiling was a 
hole for the smoke to escape from the fire, 
which was built directly beneath. There 
was no glass in the windows, and when 
finally it appeared it was only to be had in 
small pieces, necessitating the small lat¬ 
ticed windows that add so vastly to the 
picturesqueness of these cottages. There 
were no crockery dishes, and the tables 
were set with horn and pewter. Eushes 
covered the floor, and in the manor house 
the servants slept on these rushes around 
the fire that burned in the center of the 
hall. There was very little furniture; the 
tables were merely long boards placed on 
trestles that were removed when the meal 
was over, and stood up against the wall. 
It is an interesting fact, by the way, that 
in the remoter mountains of eastern Ken¬ 
tucky, settled long ago by people of pure 
English blood, this same custom prevails 
to-day. To Clovelly also came the re¬ 
ligious fervor of the Eeformation, that 
strange, excessive zeal which sent a Praise 
God Barebones to Parliament, and actually 


6 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

christened his brother If - Christ - had - 
not - died - for - thee - thou - hadst - been - 

damned - Barebones/^ 

But all movements, both good and bad, 
had somewhat spent their force when they 
reached this far-off place, and the result of 
successive generations of tranquillity shows 
to-day in the manners and habits of the 
people. There is no crime, and the people 
tell with pride that no Clovelly man has 
been arrested within the memory of the 
oldest inhabitant. No, sir,’’ said an old 
fisherman, ‘‘we be a peaceable lot. I 
never heard of anyone here ever getting 
took up. But once a young chap he went 
to Biddeford, and he took more than was 
good for him, sir, and when he came back 
he was a bit noisy and had to be spoken to. 
But that was quite a time ago, and since 
then we be very quiet, sir.” 

I agree with Andrew Lang that places 
have a distinct effect upon the character 
and the personality of the people living 
there, and surely, sweet, beautiful Clovelly 
has brought a certain goodness, peace and 
restraint into the lives of its people. 

The joy of Clovelly commences when 
the train with the pale-green locomotive 
leaves you at Biddeford, where the twelve- 


CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 


7 


mile coach ride begins. This ride takes 
you over a splendid white ribbon of road, 
laid down across the hill-tops, where come 
at times great glimpses of the sea, and be¬ 
tween typical English hedgerows, where 
for miles and miles the honeysuckle and 
brier rose bloom, topped here and there 
by the stately foxglove that, in Devon, lifts 
its purple head man-high. Uphill and 
down the highway goes, by thatched-roofed 
farmhouses with roses over the door and 
on the children’s cheeks, through bits of 
villages, where the houses crowd in rows, 
and on to the coast, where the wonderful 
flowers grow brighter and bigger. In the 
corner of a yard I saw a fuchsia tree fully 
fifteen feet high, covered with thousands 
of red and purple blossoms, and all around 
was the chaos of old-fashioned bloom the 
English love. Finally the coach halts at 
an abrupt turn in the road amidst the 
woods where some porters are waiting, and 
donkey boys with big, gray beasts are 
standing. Clovelly! ” cries the driver. 
Surely never stranger entrance to famous 
town. Nothing but the forest gathered 
close about you. But a step or two, and 
you cry out in delight as you come to the 
head of a long, narrow street that pitches 


8 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


sharply down to the sea, fiye hundred feet 
below. No horse, no carriage has ever 
traversed Clovelly’s street. There is a 
steep slant of cobble stones, some ten feet 
wide, that, after six feet or so, breaks into 
a step; another slant, another step, and so 
on to the bay that lies radiant in glorious 
light and color at the end of the vista. 
This strange street is set close with white¬ 
washed houses crowded together seemingly 
for mutual support. From this one 
thoroughfare three or four little byways 
open promisingly, but end nowhere save in 
lovely views across the water to the violet 
and gray hills beyond. Nobody knows 
when the town first began. Many years 
ago the records were burned in a fire that 
destroyed the manor house, where for gen¬ 
erations they had been kept. Six hundred 
years ago is the date commonly assigned 
for the building of the quay. Along the 
street the houses have stood for centuries. 
The keeper of the Red Lion Inn says 
nothing has been built in his day, and that 
the houses that now look the best, in his 
boyhood looked the worst, having now been 
fully repaired. The ceilings of these little 
homes are incredibly low; floors are of 
stone or brick; windows quaintly latticed; 


CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 9 

and showing throughout the structure are 
the heavy timbers of the frame. Inside 
the stone or plaster surface the walls are of 
mud, but no decay is anywhere permitted. 
Over all the houses vines and roses clam¬ 
ber, and in tiny gardens grow fuchsia 
trees and great roses, and in narrow strips 
of earth, clinging precariously to the fronts 
of the buildings that abut sharply on the 
street, grow marvelous sweet peas and per¬ 
fumed lilies, richly colored by the damp sea 
air. Occasionally a house retires some¬ 
what from the road, and in the yard of one 
of those are two of the curious Monkey- 
trees that are so noticeable in the 
grounds of Del Monte, California. 

There are two hotels, but the one I chose 
is on the quay, a rare old house, full of curi¬ 
ous turnings and little steps, and dark 
passages; an inn whose suppers remain a 
separate memory—delicious fried chicken, 
green peas, new potatoes and red rasp¬ 
berries covered with the clotted sweet 
cream of Devon, the joy of which is not to 
be duplicated. Flowers are blooming in 
the windows and fill great vases on the long 
table, and you are put to bed by candle¬ 
light, and you sleep to the sound of the 
tide, and wake in the morning to a glorious 


10 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


view of bay and shore, and are glad yon are 
alive. 

Once npon a time, though even the Great 
War seems not to have come this way, the 
waterfront was fortified, and, along the 
sea, old walls can still be traced, and hard 
by the inn is a fine old gate that gives the 
final touch of old-world picturesqueness. 
On the quay guns were one time mounted, 
but in these pacific days are put to hum¬ 
drum uses, for, being inverted and ce¬ 
mented to the pier, they form the posts to 
which the fishers tie their boats. 

Nothing on wheels can travel the ladder¬ 
like street, so provisions, mail, and tour¬ 
ists are carried up and down on the backs 
of donkeys, led by round-faced boys. 
These donkeys, and the red sails of the 
fishing-boats, and the white houses cling¬ 
ing against the vivid green of the hillside, 
lend to the picture a suggestion of Italy 
that is often commented upon. 

The title to all the village rests in a 
single individual, who rents the houses to 
the fishers at annual rentals ranging from 
fifteen to a hundred and twenty-five dollars. 
Casual repairs are made by the tenant, but 
restorations of consequence are attended to 



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CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 11 

by the owner, to whose artistic taste and 
careful supervision the public is indebted 
for the preservation of Clovelly’s charm 
unspoiled by modern ‘Ltuprovements.’’ 
The church and school are not in the village 
street, but up on the hill a short distance 
away. Everyone goes to church, and for 
ten months in the year school attendance is 
compulsory for children under fourteen 
years of age. 

But not all the attractiveness of Clovelly 
lies in the street and shore. Back on the 
hills is a drive that ranks for beauty with 
the ‘‘ twenty-mile drive ’’ in California, the 
Great Orme’s Head drive in North Wales, 
and the wonderful road from Sorrento to 
Amalfi. It is a winding, upward, wooded 
way, with window-like openings framed 
with great oaks and looking out on superb 
views of the bay beneath, clasped with its 
far-fiung headlands. For three miles or 
more the road runs beneath trees centuries 
old, their gray trunks draped with ivy, and 
where the forest breaks away grow the 
wonderful Devonshire wild fiowers, many 
of which are elsewhere unknown; fiowers 
that Kingsley speaks of as from seed that 
came from the Fairy Isles of the unknown 
western ocean, ‘‘ strange flowers that still 


12 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


linger about this land . . . the Cornish 
heath, and the little pink Butterworth of 
Devon/’ The culminating glory of the 
way is when you come out upon an open 
space, and see, a thousand feet below, the 
little harbor and the white houses of 
Clovelly that seem to ripple down its one 
long street. But tliere is another view, not 
so celebrated, but to me of equal beauty, 
where can be seen for miles the circling 
coast line of the bay, gradually fusing, un¬ 
der the soft and subtle color that comes 
with afternoon, into the far blue of water 
and of sky. 

One bright morning a fisher rowed me 
out along the fair, wicked coast of Devon 
that has broken ships and hearts with her 
gales and rocks, and he told me tales of 
wrecks, which each winter pile up along 
the shore. “ The worst wreck that ever I 
see, sir,” said he, was two years ago 
come December. She was a big steamer, 
seven thousand tons they said, and bound 
for Buenos Aires. ’Twas a clear night, 
and the moon was shining, but ’twas blow¬ 
ing like it was a hurricane. She was coming 
down the channel and putting her nose into 
the seas that piled all over her. They’d 
loaded her too heavy, sir, and ’twas so bit- 


CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 13 

ter cold they must have been keeping no 
good watch. And them seas took off her 
ventilators one by one, least so we think, 
and she began to fill from the wash that 
went over her every time she dipped to a 
sea. After a bit the Captain must have 
tried to get about, but it was no use. I 
was out to see to my boat, for it was an 
awful tide. ’Twas two o’clock in the 
morning, and I heard her call and see her 
flare. She was right otf the pier then, but 
a good five miles out. I called the Captain 
of the Life Station, and he sent a man to 
cry the wreck and raise the town, and 
everybody came down to the pier, and the 
women got things ready for the men we 
hoped to bring ashore. 

I was pretty well forward in the life¬ 
boat, and she was full of water from the 
minute we started. By and by we could 
see the steamer fair as we’d lift on a wave. 
She was settling at the head, and we pulled 
till one man clean give out. But it was no 
use. We saw ’em get the boats over, but 
they went to smash as soon as they’d hit a 
wave. We was almost to her when, all of 
a sudden, she give a long lurch to one side, 
and a big wave broke over her, and she 
wasn’t there any more. We were five min- 


14 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

utes too late, sir. Where she went down, 
the water was all smooth and oily, and all 
sorts of loose stutf floating, but that was 
all.^» 

The summer night comes slowly to 
Clovelly, and the twilight lingers till ten 
o’clock. The women gather in the door¬ 
ways and talk and knit. Down by the quay 
the fishing-boats are drawn far up the 
beach beyond the reach of the great tide 
that rises twenty feet and more. The 
donkeys have made their last climb for the 
day, and are stabled upon the hill at the 
head of the street. On a long bench in 
front of the Red Lion a group of fisher¬ 
men discuss the remote events of the world. 
They tell, too, of the great storm of 1882, 
when thirty of their boats went down; and 
of the blow of one November, when the 
waves washed in at the Red Lion door. 
And they talk of Clovelly fishing boats that 
went out among mines and submarines dur¬ 
ing the Great War. Presently they say 
good-night, and a great quiet settles down 
on the village. 

No, there is nothing just like Clovelly. 
It is unique among the villages of earth, 
and for me possesses a charm more potent 
than I have elsewhere felt. I have not for- 



ON THE WATER FRONT 
CLOVELLY 


















CLOVELLY, ENGLAND 15 

gotten the peacefulness of Eothenburg, the 
intense picturesqueness of San Gimignano, 
nor the effectiveness of Carcassonne. Nor 
am I unmindful of Middelhurg’s lure, the 
beauty of Cintra, or the strangeness of 
Ronda, but in this one element of charm I 
think Clovelly stands supreme. 


MONT ST'MICHEL-fpance 

It is not a little confusing to find, when 
you sit down to write of a picture town of 
France, that you must write at the same 
time of a little town in England, yet such 
is the necessity imposed by a curious 
geographical coincidence. 

It has been said Nature never repeats 
herself, and that all her masterpieces are 
unique. Nevertheless, she has very nearly 
reproduced on the northern shore of the 
English Channel the wonderful Mont St. 
Michel that, upon the southern coast, 
stands as a monument marking the begin¬ 
ning of the boundary line between Brit¬ 
tany and Normandy, two of the most 
charming provinces of France. 

The French Mont St. Michel is an 
isolated cone of rock, three hundred feet in 
height, that rises from the sea a half-mile 
or so from shore. Of almost the same cir¬ 
cumference and of practically the same 
general appearance, the English St. 
Michael’s Mount lifts itself half a mile off 
the Cornwall coast to a height but little 
less. The ancient legends of the land that 

16 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 17 

now is France tell us that early in the 
Eighth Century St. Michael appeared in a 
vision to the Bishop of the Diocese em¬ 
bracing the Mount, and commanded that 
on that Mount he build a church, of which 
Michael should he the patron saint. The 
old-time folklore of Cornwall has pre¬ 
cisely the same tradition, coming from a 
somewhat earlier period, concerning the 
St. Michael’s Mount. On the summit of 
each rose a Gothic church in honor of this 
Saint. Later, a castle appeared on one 
and fortifications on the other. On each 
humble fishers built their villages, pro¬ 
tected on the English rock by the castle, 
on the other by the walls. Around both 
sweep the Channel tides. 

The English Mount of St. Michael is 
easily reached in any tour of Cornwall, or 
the journey can be quickly made from 
Plymouth, or even London. 

Mount’s Bay is a huge sheet of water, 
with Land’s End for the distant western 
coast line. Dominating this bay is the 
Mount, about half a mile out from the little 
village of Marazion, which nestles on the 
mainland directly opposite, and where 
there is a very comfortable inn, with rooms 
looking out on the bay and the Mount. A 


18 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


narrow causeway runs from the island to 
the shore, but high tide covers it, so that 
the numerous little launches form a main 
dependence of travel between the two. 
Most visitors prefer to stop at Penzance, 
three miles to the west, and between which 
and the Mount there is constant com¬ 
munication. 

Away at the back of history, away be¬ 
yond the time when Cassar came to Britain, 
the tin mines of Cornwall were worked by 
unknown miners, and their products trans¬ 
ported by ocean ways to eastern lands. 
From various bits of folklore, and frag¬ 
mentary legends even yet told by the Cor¬ 
nish folk, and from the remains of records 
and monuments in distant ancient Phoe¬ 
nicia, it is now accepted as a fact that, be¬ 
fore there was a Rome, and while Britain 
yet lay bleak, a tangled wood and treach¬ 
erous morass, the Phoenicians knew of 
Cornwall and its tin. It is also believed 
that here, at what now is known as St. 
MichaePs Mount, was the market-place 
where the earliest of Britons brought their 
tin and sold it to the traders from the 
east. 

A graphic picture of this early time is 
presented by the author of A Short History 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 19 

of Penzancej and though the quotation is a 
long one, it is worth the reading. It is 
not easy to realize Mount’s Bay, as it was 
in those primeval days. Probably the sur¬ 
rounding hills were mostly covered with 
a virgin forest. Here and there along the 
shore the ancient inhabitants had their bee¬ 
hive huts, circular wigwams, with now and 
then a chief’s hut with its central court. 
The Mount was a mere granite pile, ^ the 
Castle of the Sun,’ more of a peninsula 
than now, with low-lying woodland 
stretching from it, which the sea at every 
great storm threatened to submerge, as at 
last it did. Lo, to the south ships are com¬ 
ing, strange, quaint galleys, with bronzed, 
Jewish-looking crews in long Asiatic robes, 
making for the Mount, the appointed em¬ 
porium of their trade with the natives, who 
are jealous of foreigners landing on the 
mainland. Out of the huts now stream to 
the shore little crowds of natives. They 
are fair-skinned, bright-colored people, and 
talk in odd Celtic language. Their dress 
is very queer, ^ long, black cloaks and 
tunics reaching to the feet, girt about the 
breast,’ and they are walking with long 
staves in their hands. They make for the 
Mount and have with them their hardy 


20 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


little horses laden with blocks of tin. These 
they barter with the Jewish-looking 
merchants for money, clothes and pot¬ 
tery. ’ ’ 

Even when Rome ruled Britain the land 
reached far out beyond its present shore, 
and a great forest covered what is now the 
bottom of the bay—covers it yet, for on 
still days the voyager looks over the side 
of his launch into the branches of trees that 
sway with the tides beneath his keel, and 
in times of storm oaks are uprooted from 
their submarine home, and strewn upon the 
coast from Marazion to Penzance and 
beyond. 

The old Saxon name for the Mount sig¬ 
nified The Gray Rock in the Wood,’’ and 
on its summit there was blood of Druid 
sacrifices, just as on that other rock across 
the Channel. Christianity had not been 
long established on the Cornish coast when, 
as related, St. Michael appeared in a 
vision to the Abbot of a nearby monastery 
and commanded him to build a chapel in 
his honor on the island which then rose 
from the sea, that had engulfed the forest 
of the Gray Rock. 

Long before the Conquest the monastery 
was built, and there, with its chapel, it 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 21 

stands to-day, changed first to a castle, 
and now to a home, but still with many of 
its walls and rooms intact. Indeed, the 
great Gothic hall where the monks used to 
dine is practically untouched, and the 
chapel, too, is little altered. 

Of course, the wonderful similarity in 
name, situation, use and tradition between 
these two Mounts was early apparent, and, 
influenced largely by that similarity, Ed¬ 
ward the Confessor, with the approval of 
the Bishop, gave the Cornwall Mount, mon¬ 
astery, village, monks and all to the estab¬ 
lishment of the monks of Mont St. Michel 
in Normandy, so for a long time France 
may be said to have had territory in Eng¬ 
land, and these two most extraordinary 
places were united under the rule of one 
Abbot, and were, so far as a legal existence 
went, one in fact, though in different lands 
and separated by the stormy waters of the 
Channel. 

It was not until the Seventeenth Century 
that the monks were driven forth and the 
castle came to absorb the monastery. Since 
then the Mount has been in the possession 
of the family of the present Lord St. 
Levan, who now occupies it as a permanent 
home. Not only is the castle itself but lit- 


22 PICTUKE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


tie clianged, but mucli of the furniture 
made by the monks is still in use. In one 
of the chambers is a bed of beautifully 
carved oak over three hundred years old, 
and beside it a chair stands, antedating it 
by two centuries. 

Similarity of tradition between these two 
Mounts has been brought down to a very 
recent period. About the same time that 
the skeletons were discovered in the secret 
dungeon in Mont St. Michel (the French 
form of the name), which discovery is de¬ 
tailed later, some workmen repairing the 
chapel on St. MichaePs Mount found a 
place in the floor that gave forth a hollow 
sound. The tiles were taken up and a 
small pit or dungeon was disclosed in which 
was the skeleton of a man considerably 
over six feet in height. Was he some 
heretic buried alive by the pious monks, or 
was he some knightly foe of an old-time 
lord of the castle, thus conveniently dis¬ 
posed of by his enemy? We shall never 
know. 

But the parallel cannot be followed for¬ 
ever. Turner idealized the English Mount 
in one of those glowing paintings of his, 
but the glory on the canvas is not wholly 
present in the fact, and St. MichaePs 



H 
72 
< 

O 

K 

72 

15 w 

P5 •< 

8 w 

y 

u 
W 

H 


b 

O 


H 

72 





















MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 23 

Mount lacks many of those peculiar ele¬ 
ments that distinguish the French island as 
one of the two or three most romantic and 
interesting places in Europe. The Cor¬ 
nish hamlet lacks the ancient walls, the 
marvelous tides, the strange, gray waste of 
sand, and the tier on tier of medieval build¬ 
ings clinging dizzily to the precipitous cliff. 
The color scheme, too, is different. Over 
the Cornwall rock hang skies of blue with 
drift of fleecy cloud, while always the 
waves flash by its shores. The monotonous 
buildings merely fringe the beach, then 
come stretches of vivid green hillside, and 
finallyrise the beautiful walls and pinnacles 
of the castle. The sense of light, of space, 
of flowing winds and vivid color, that so 
distinguish this English coast, are all lack¬ 
ing from that bit of Norman shore where 
the great bay of St. Michel makes deep 
indentation and holds within its clasp the 
French Mont St. Michel, long known to 
Europe as ^ ‘ The Marvel. ’ ’ 

Fifty miles from St. Malo, and well off 
the path of the average tourist, this great 
bay, a hundred square miles in extent, is 
reached by leaving the main line of rail¬ 
road at Pontorson and taking a branch 
that runs seven miles northward to the 


24 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


shore, and thence over a causeway to Mont 
St. Michel itself. 

We came to the bay at noon; a gray sky 
stooped over the vast expanse before us, 
an expanse not of water, but of sand, gray 
as the day and the sky. Nowhere was any 
water to be seen. From the dead level of 
the sands, half a mile from the shore, rose 
abruptly this cone of rock girdled by walls 
finished in 1264, encircled from base to 
summit by ancient buildings, and crowned 
by the beautiful spire of a monastery nine 
hundred years old. 

This mysterious rock has always been 
the object of superstitious awe. When the 
faint dawn of historical light first discloses 
it, the Druids had a temple there. AVhen 
the Romans mastered Gaul, a shrine to 
Jove took the place of the Druid altar, and 
in 708 a Christian chapel to Saint Michael 
was built from the ruins of these earlier 
Pagan homes of worship. 

Richard of Normandy began the founda¬ 
tions of the present church. Far under¬ 
ground there are weird, half-lit halls up¬ 
held by mighty columns hewn from the liv¬ 
ing rock. There are stairways cut from 
the very heart of the mountain leading by 
strange ways to dark dungeons, and 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 25 

through lofty subterranean chambers to 
great halls, where the monks of gone cen¬ 
turies gathered for their daily toil. And 
deeper and gloomier yet are the catacombs 
still tenanted by all that remains of the 
bodies of these same monks. 

For hundreds of years political prisoners 
were confined here, and fearful cells are 
shown; and in a great pit, where uncanny 
shadows lurk, is the treadmill where they 
trod out their unhappy lives. Not many 
years ago some workmen broke through a 
wall into a space of absolute blackness, 
which, when a torch lent its murky light, 
was seen absolutely to reek with horror, 
for there hung in rusting chains a score 
and more of moldering skeletons. There 
is nowhere to be found a stranger, more 
uncanny place than these grewsome halls, 
and they have been well reproduced in the 
scenery with which the stage is sometimes 
set in the opera of Robert the Devil.” 
And, above all, is the marvelous Gothic 
chapel, vying with Sainte Chapelle in 
Paris as the most exquisite bit of Gothic 
architecture in the world. 

The train runs out along the narrow 
causeway connecting the Mount with the 
mainland, and stops just outside the gate. 


26 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


As you walk under the massive thickness 
of the walls you can look up to the iron- 
barred portcullis still in position as when 
it stopped the way to hostile entrance six 
hundred years ago. Over and over again 
the English battled unavailingly for pos¬ 
session of this fortress, for such in the Mid¬ 
dle Ages the island had become; the most 
serious attempt being in 1434, where, eight 
thousand strong, they struggled with the 
defenders who sallied forth upon the sands . 
to give them battle. The two great, queer 
bomb ketches the defeated English left be¬ 
hind that day still guard the inner gateway 
of the walls. 

It is a curious fact about this place, 
where everything is curious, that the in¬ 
habitants not only depended upon their 
own valor for defense, but, from the 
Twelfth Century, had kept a regiment of 
great dogs trained to attack and to defend. 
These dogs not only took part in the battles 
so frequently fought, but were turned loose 
at night to act the part of sentinels. There 
is a reference to this in a decree of Louis 
XI in 1475, granting an additional annual 
income for the care of these animals. It is, 
perhaps, equally curious to note that this 
custom of training dogs to defend a city 




MONT ST. MICHEL 
















MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 27 

was not unique to Mont St. Michel, the 
records of more than one medieval town 
showing that the custom was more or less 
common throughout Europe during the 
dark times of the Middle Ages. 

Numberless legends are connected with 
the Mount. I referred before to St. Mi¬ 
chael himself appearing to the Bishop in 
the Eighth Century, and commanding that 
a church should be built upon the summit. 
It seems that the Bishop was too deliberate 
in the matter, whereupon the Saint ap¬ 
peared a third time and emphasized his 
orders by putting his finger through the 
Prelate’s skull and writing instructions on 
his brain. Anyway, if you go to the 
nearby town of Avranches they will show 
you this Bishop’s skull, with the hole 
plainly visible where the Archangel’s 
finger went through. 

These are primitive folk who live along 
the one street that sharply zigzags up the 
steep wall of the Mount, and their lives yet 
respond to the old traditions that even 
more powerfully affected their forefathers. 
There is, for instance, a rock that juts 
boldly out from the face of the clitf on the 
southwest side of the island, and from the 
earliest times weird tales have clustered 


28 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


around it. Undoubtedly it was a sacri¬ 
ficial spot in Druid worship, and the agony 
of countless victims who suffered there 
must have lingered, a terrible memory, in 
the minds of the people. At all events, the 
place came to be regarded as the haunt of 
an evil spirit, and a legend centered round 
it that ill luck would follow the passerby 
who did not propitiate the spirit dwelling 
there, and to this day, as the fisher folk sail 
out to sea, they invariably bow the head as 
they pass La Gire, as the rock is called. 

The influence of the past is also mani¬ 
fested in what is possibly the only industry, 
save fishing, that the island boasts. 
Bayeux, near which William the Con¬ 
queror was born, is but a short distance in¬ 
land, and he and the long line of Norman 
dukes were always intimately associated 
with the life of the place. At Bayeux is 
still preserved the famous tapestry woven 
by the women of William’s family during 
those middle years of the Eleventh Cen¬ 
tury just preceding the Conquest. At 
Mont St. Michel there has been for ages a 
factory, if one may use so large a term 
for so small a thing, where pottery has been 
made. Now upon the vases here manufac¬ 
tured are reproduced the quaint and mis- 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 29 

drawn forms that appear on the famous 
tapestry. The writer has a large vase of 
artistic shape and rich, warm coloring, on 
which appear two charging knights, copied 
literally from the work of those long dead 
women of the Conqueror’s household. 

You leave the train outside the walls, 
and, passing through the double gateway, 
find yourself in the queer, steep street and 
close to a hotel thoroughly in keeping with 
the atmosphere of the place. From the lit¬ 
tle hall you enter a large room set with 
tables. At one side is the largest fireplace 
I ever saw. On a great spit a sheep is roast¬ 
ing, while on smaller spits above it ducks 
and chickens sizzle. You give an order, 
the meat is sliced off before your eyes, and 
the spit continues slowly to turn. 

After exploring the one street, and hav¬ 
ing been guided through the wonderful 
monastery, church, prison and fortress in 
one, it is well to visit the museum. It con¬ 
tains, of course, much that is conventional, 
but it possesses one thing that is absolutely 
unique in all the world—a collection of fif¬ 
teen thousand watch cocks. 

Now a watch cock was in use in France, 
perhaps elsewhere, from some time in the 
Sixteenth Century until toward the end of 


30 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


the French empire. These cocks may be 
described as open-work covers to protect 
the mechanism, and add at the same time to 
the beauty of the timepiece. A vast num¬ 
ber of those now exhibited in the museum 
are bits of consummate art, carved with 
the rarest skill, and of the most dainty and 
intricate design. Why this beautiful col¬ 
lection, without parallel in the world, 
should be found in this remote corner of 
France, I am unable to say, but here it is, 
and well worth seeing. 

At five in the afternoon everyone gathers 
on the causeway, and on the western point 
of the island, to watch the coming of the 
tide, one of the sights of the world. As 
far as the eye can reach stretches the gray 
sand, silent, empty. Seven miles and a 
half lie between the ocean and the rock. 
Presently a strange murmur jjervades the 
air; it seems to come from nowhere, and 
yet to be everywhere. And then, far on 
the horizon, lifts a line of white. Every 
moment it draws nearer, and the sound in 
the air swells louder; and then, with 
astonishing speed, sweeps up the line of 
crested sea, and in a moment the sands are 
but a space of swirling water. And on the 
wave ride in the fishing-boats that went 


MONT ST. MICHEL, FRANCE 31 

out to sea on the tide at dawn. Many a 
tragedy has been caused by the swift in¬ 
rush of this true tidal wave, for, save along 
narrow paths, the bottom of this vast, 
strange bay is quicksand, and, after the 
tide has once turned, and the sound of its 
coming is heard, no man can hope to escape 
its reach unless he be close, indeed, to the 
Mount or the shores of the mainland. In 
autumn, when fierce northerly gales drive 
in the sea, this wave comes with such a 
rush across the seven miles of sand, that 
no horse is swift enough to evade it. So, 
at least, runs the tale they tell you at the 
Mount, and, having once seen the speed 
of even the tide of August, there is no dis¬ 
position to question the statement. 

A few years ago a Parisian sculptor de¬ 
sired to portray in marble the acme of 
human horror. Accompanied by a moving- 
picture machine, its operator, and an as¬ 
sistant, he went to Mont St. Michel and 
deliberately permitted himself to sink into 
the sands not far from the causeway, upon 
which the machine, was placed to catch his 
expression. Of course, he was to be rescued 
at the proper moment. But almost im¬ 
mediately he felt the awful pull of the un¬ 
seen forces down below, and, recognizing 


32 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 

the imminence of his danger, gave the 
signal to be released. But it was misunder¬ 
stood, lower and lower he sank, while the 
conviction that he was thus miserably to 
perish turned intended acting to horrible 
reality. Fortunately some peasants, at¬ 
tracted by his screams, and familiar with 
the spot, succeeded in saving him at the 
last moment. 

The guidebook of the Mount was writ¬ 
ten by the Marquis de Tombelaine, who was 
thoroughly familiar with the quicksands 
and the tides, and yet, on April 3d, 1892, 
he was engulfed a short distance from the 
ramparts, and his body was never recov¬ 
ered. 

The French Government has a sensible 
way of acquiring the remarkable and beau¬ 
tiful places within its territory, and mak¬ 
ing them “ National Monuments,’’ thus 
preserving them from encroachment and 
providing for their care and maintenance 
at public expense. This has been done 
with Mont St. Michel, securing to the 
future traveler one of the most unusual and 
interesting sights of Europe. 


CARCASSONNE-france 


In the year 1 a.d. there lived in the 
vaguely known interior of what now is 
Germany a wild tribe of savage men, the 
Goths. In the year 250 they had grown 
into a powerful but barbaric people, hav¬ 
ing no part in the history of the civilized 
world. Five centuries more, and they had 
crushed the civilization that despised them, 
they had swept the Eoman armies from the 
world, they had placed a Gothic emperor 
on the throne of the Caesars, they had ruled 
from the Bosporus to the Gates of Her¬ 
cules, and they had vanished utterly, leav¬ 
ing scant trace upon the earth of their 
language, their customs and their savage 
power. 

Of all that has come down into our own 
day of this strange and meteoric people, 
perhaps the most complete and important 
is the city of Carcassonne in southwestern 
France. By this it is not meant that this 
most wonderful of the walled cities of 
Europe that still exists, is in all respects 
the Carcassonne of the Visigothic period, 
but it is a fact that from early in the four 

33 


34 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


hundreds, down to 725, this city was one of 
the most notable seats of Visigothic power, 
and that here, more than elsewhere, are 
still preserved Gothic walls and Gothic for¬ 
tifications. It is said, indeed, that the whole 
great northern wall, which looks down so 
majestically from the steep hillside, is 
practically unchanged since those days 
when, at the close of the Sixth Century, it 
helped to turn back the beleaguering 
armies of the Franks. 

In those far-off times of Gothic su¬ 
premacy, the territory just north of the 
Pyrenees was politically part of Spain, 
then a Visigothic kingdom. It lay, how¬ 
ever, so invitingly open to attack from the 
Frankish power, then dominant in what is 
now northern and central France, that over 
and again the Goths were driven back be¬ 
yond the mountains, only to return in fresh 
numbers as soon as the soldiers of the 
Franks withdrew. Finally an army of 
sixty thousand men sat down before the 
walls of Carcassonne. But the town was 
impregnable, and, sallying forth from its 
two gates (and to this day there are only 
these two means of entering and leaving 
the city), the Goths so defeated the be¬ 
siegers that never again, while the Gothic 



CARCASSONNE 














CAECASSONNE, FEANCE 35 

power remained, was a Frankish army seen 
in the south. 

The power of the city thus begun by 
the Goths did not end with their final over¬ 
throw, but grew to still greater splendor 
under succeeding rulers, till it reached its 
zenith in the twelve hundreds. 

After the Goths, and in turn the Sara¬ 
cens, had been expelled from the city, it 
passed into the possession of rulers known 
as the Viscounts of Carcassonne, who 
maintained for nearly five centuries an in¬ 
dependent government save for the feudal 
overlordship of the kings of France. This 
independence came to an end in 1209. For 
some time there had been growing up in 
southern France a religious movement 
that, born before its time, was doomed to 
failure, but found its successful counter¬ 
part in the Eeformation three centuries 
later. This movement was a protest 
against the claims of the Papacy to tem¬ 
poral power and the alleged corruption of 
the clergy. Its adherents demanded a 
simpler ritual of worship, and a stricter 
morality of life. They abjured the Mass, 
denied purgatory, and denounced as 

image worship ’’ the presence in the 
churches of statues and pictures. These 


36 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


people were known as Albigenses, and 
among their adherents at the beginning of 
the twelve hundreds was the youthful Ray¬ 
mond Roger, Viscount of Carcassonne. 

Against this sect the Pope declared a 
crusade, which was to be carried on under 
the same conditions as the crusades to the 
Holy Land, and in 1209 there encamped 
before the ViscounUs city an army led by 
Simon de Montfort, the English Knight. 

But the giant walls of Carcassonne could 
not be stormed, could not be battered down. 
And then this Englishman (I am ashamed 
that he was one) proposed to the boyish 
Viscount a conference just outside the 
walls. After all, could they not arrange 
these little matters—for the sake of peace 
could they not agree on a purgatory, with 
an image or two thrown in? The clanging 
portcullis was raised, the great gate thrown 
open. Rows of spearmen kept back the 
crowd, who cheered young Raymond 
Roger, as in gleaming armor he rode 
forth with but half a dozen horsemen at his 
side, the golden banner of his house carried 
proudly before him, to meet the grizzled 
de Montfort, where, across the river, lay 
the white tents of the enemy. Over the 
ramparts we tread to-day leaned many a 


CARCASSONNE, FRANCE 37 

man-at-arms, men and ramparts tliat would 
have kept their young master safe against 
half the hosts of Christendom, and, as he 
went down the path, he turned and waved 
farewell, and they cheered him as he went. 

And Simon de Montfort lied; and the 
Viscount came no more to his city and his 
people, who, to gain him back, surrendered 
themselves and their town to the traitorous 
Englishman. And then de Montfort lied 
again, and the boy whom he had captured 
by fair, false words was given a poisoned 
cup, and laid down his life, first martyr to 
the spirit of the Reformation, and de Mont¬ 
fort reigned in his stead. 

A few years later de Montfort’s son, 
plagued by the constant uprising of his 
subjects, gave up the city to the throne 
of France, and thenceforward the history 
of Carcassonne merged in the history of 
France, of which it has since remained a 
part. 

And now this city remains, a white 
dream of the Middle Ages, just as 
it was on that day seven hundred odd 
years ago, when young Raymond Roger 
rode down the hill to captivity and 
to death. The circle of the great walls 
is neither more nor less than then, being 


38 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


somewhat more than a mile in circumfer^ 
ence. I know of only two other towns in 
Europe that present precisely the same ap¬ 
pearance now as when armed knights rode 
in and out their gates, Rothenburg in Ba¬ 
varia, and Avila in Spain. But Rothen¬ 
burg was never a stronghold, and a few 
days’ siege was sufficient for its capture. 
She is lovely, a bit out of fairyland, but 
she is not majestic. Avila’s great walls 
circle the city for mile after mile in crude, 
unpicturesque strength. They are merely 
a fence, utterly hiding the low houses that 
huddle within. But Carcassonne is a piled- 
up majesty, like some fantastic city in the 
clouds—intact, unchanged, invulnerable to 
all the forces of its time. Its half-hundred 
soaring towers are grouped as by an artist; 
it is the pictured past. It is incarnate his¬ 
tory and romance. 

And this distinct medieval silhouette,” 
as Henry James calls it, has a worthy set¬ 
ting. On the very borderland of south¬ 
ern Prance, in sight of the peaks of the 
Pyrenees that mark where Spain begins, 
and only a few hours’ ride to the westward 
from the blue reaches of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, it lords it over the most beautiful 
country in France. 



A VISTA OF TOWERS 
CARCASSONNE 










CAECASSONNE, FRANCE 39 

The way thither from the coast at Nar- 
bonne leads along a valley of sheer love¬ 
liness. On the right, the outlines of far 
lavender mountains are suggested through 
the haze, and on the left the foothills of 
the Pyrenees come closer. Along the road 
are faded old towns of immense and pic¬ 
turesque antiquity, bridges of beautiful 
curves, bits of city walls, turreted castles, 
and here and there the isolated, ruined 
round towers where, of old, watchmen 
guarded the approaches to the valley, 
which is now one vast vineyard. For miles 
and miles, and as far on either hand as the 
eye can reach, stretches the vivid green of 
the vines. Coming from the brown, 
parched hillsides of central France, the im¬ 
pression is of infinite freshness and beauty. 
The vines are not grown on stakes or wires, 
but cut low, not above two feet or so from 
the ground. The stalks are strong and 
thick, but they bend to the earth with the 
weight of the fruit, much of which must 
ripen on the ground as it does in the Dal¬ 
matian vineyards, a thousand miles to the 
eastward. 

The cultivation is of the highest order, 
no weeds show, and the earth is loose and 
rich. At no great distance from each 


40 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


other are wells, each with a water-wheel 
turned creakingly by a slow plodding mule 
or ox, and, as the wheel revolves, the water 
is plashed from the little buckets into 
ditches that run out among the vines; a 
primitive system of irrigation brought 
across the mountains from Spain, where, 
centuries ago, it was introduced by the 
Moors. Already the peasants are making 
ready for the vintage, for the roads are 
filled with giant w'agons piled high with 
hogsheads, and drawn by six or seven 
horses harnessed in tandem. 

As the distance from the coast increases, 
the foothills break down into the valley, 
and suddenly on one low crest appears the 
vision of Carcassonne. 

I have traveled many miles in many 
lands searching solely for the picturesque 
and the medieval, but never have I 
seen so perfect and splendid a picture, so 
complete an embodiment of what I sought. 
Everything one expects is there, and more. 
It is the one perfect, flawless thing I have 
so far found on earth. 

At a respectful distance, and with a de¬ 
fending stream between, the railroad 
pauses at the new town (new six hundred 
years ago), one of the most distressingly 


CARCASSONNE, FRANCE 41 

commonplace towns conceivable, with open 
sewers flowing through the streets, and 
more dogs to howl at night than are to be 
found in Constantinople. Its only redeem¬ 
ing feature is that it stays away from the 
real Carcassonne on the hill. It is respect¬ 
ful at least, and that, in this instance, is 
everything. There is a hotel in this new 
town, at which everybody advises you to 
stop, which is the third noisiest in Europe^ 
and where you are some two miles from 
what you came out to see. But up on the hill, 
in the very heart of things, there is a quiet 
little inn with a magic courtyard full of 
palms and flowers, where automobiles can¬ 
not come, and where you can always be at 
peace. 

Crossing the bridge with the stately 
towers and battlements of the city on the 
hill ever before you, you meet a path that 
clambers up the steep and pauses at the 
gate. Starting here, another path leads 
round the walls. This walk is the best of 
all. The solid masonry lifts far above you, 
and every turn brings to view new com¬ 
binations of surpassing picturesqueness. 
Seventy miles to the south the great bulk 
of the Pyrenees blocks the horizon, and 
dotting all the tree-set valley that lies be- 


42 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


tween are red-roofed villages and cluster¬ 
ing farmhouses. A fresh, sweet wind 
comes out from the west and carries great 
white clouds across a sky of brilliant blue. 
The hot sun brings out the scent of the 
pines and the grass and the earth, and one 
is alone with nature and the past and a 
matchless day—a day of dreams and 
visions and delight. Carcassonne must be 
seen alone, the presence of a companion 
would break the spell. 

Around by the farther gate, the Nar- 
bonne Gate, is the cemetery, its pointed 
trees and white crosses making an unex¬ 
pected picture against the gray town. 
Keeping on under the cliff-like walls of the 
Gothic period, and we come back again to 
where the high-roofed citadel and tall flank¬ 
ing towers of the only other gateway com¬ 
pose into what is probably the most 
splendid medieval picture to be found any¬ 
where. This entrance is a complicated 
one; you twist in and out among huge 
towers and vast defending walls, and un¬ 
der four distinct gates, above which the 
iron-barred portcullis still hangs, before 
you finally emerge into the narrow street 
that goes on to the little market-place. In 
the second story of the tower that guards 




















CAECASSONNE, FRANCE 43 


the outermost entrance is a fireplace, where 
swung a caldron which in time of siege was 
filled with boiling oil, and in the floor is a 
round hole where it was poured down upon 
the enemy. 

There are two great walls to the city, 
one within the other, and between the two 
is an empty, grass-grown space. Within 
the inner wall the little city lies—and 
silence. Men and women live in these 
whitewashed houses, and children pass in 
the rough-paved streets. But all seem 
conscious of, even oppressed by, their 
unique environment that so sets them 
apart. In the perpetual presence of the 
past, life speaks in whispers. They seem 
in some way like ghosts, these quiet people 
of Carcassonne. They flit through the 
streets as shadows pass, in a colorless, 
shade-like existence, utterly different from 
the hearty, full-blooded peasants of the 
town below. There is little for them to do, 
and they do nothing. Two or three little 
shops that no one appears to tend, and 
where no one comes to buy; some stone¬ 
cutters in the tiny square, a priest slip¬ 
ping by in the shadow of a wall; a woman 
alone at a well; some boys silently passing, 
intent on some mysterious business; an old 


44 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

woman who sits in the sun and begs—this 
was all the life I found. 

I do not believe anyone dares follow 
these narrow streets at night, for there 
must be ghosts in Carcassonne; you are 
quite sure of it, even by day. The build¬ 
ings are all made for someone else—for 
folk long dead. There is the Tower of 
the Inquisition with the Judges’ room, long 
and low, and a wicked fireplace where tor¬ 
ture irons were heated; and down below are 
other rooms, cell-like rooms; and still 
farther down other rooms, graves, where 
obdurate victims were walled up until they 
died; and below—but you do not want to 
follow. And beyond this grim old tower, 
where men did so devilishly, is the radiant, 
beautiful cathedral where they worshiped 
theologically ’mid purpling incense, and 
roll of organ, and pomp of crimson vest¬ 
ment, while a tortured Christ looked down 
from His cross above the altar. 

And there is the Tower of Justice, where 
some wrongs, perhaps, were righted, and 
others perpetrated, and beyond this the 
Bishop’s Palace, with walls and defenses 
making it a certain refuge in time of 
trouble. 

Nothing is for to-day, or of to-day, or 


CARCASSONNE, FRANCE 45 

for the use of the pale people living there, 
it is all part of a past life, hut unchanged, 
untouched. Of course, there are ghosts in 
Carcassonne. Wouldn’t you like to be in 
that old torture chamber some still night 
when the moon looks in at the window? 

Over the Narbonne Gate is a curious, 
battered statue. Some say it is the image 
of the patron saint of the city, but much 
to be preferred is the picturesque legend 
sometimes told concerning it. When 
Charlemagne and his army encamped be¬ 
fore the city in those remote times, when 
it was held by the Saracens, he found it im¬ 
possible to take by storm its impregnable 
walls or force its mighty gates, but he 
drew his lines close, and day by day picked 
off the defenders. Finally only one old 
woman was left alive. Night and day she 
toiled along the walls, shooting arrows at 
the besiegers, hurling great stones from the 
machines, sounding a trumpet as for the 
gathering of a regiment, and doing this 
and doing that till Charlemagne was con¬ 
vinced that an army still held the town. 

In triumph the old woman watched the 
folding tents of the mighty Emperor as 
he made ready to abandon the siege. And 
then a miracle happened. Alone on his 


46 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


white horse, Charlemagne came forth for 
a last look at the city he could not take. 
On his shield was blazoned the cross, but 
the crescent still waved defiantly from the 
towers of Carcassonne. And then, as the 
old woman watched the Emperor, and the 
Emperor gazed at the towers, one by one 
those towers bowed down their heads be¬ 
fore him, and unseen hands wiped out the 
crescent from the Saracen banner, and 
painted there the cross. By this miracle 
converted to the faith, the solitary de¬ 
fender opened wide the gates, and the 
astonished Emperor entered in. To com¬ 
memorate her heroic defense, and her con¬ 
version to Christianity, Charlemagne 
caused the old woman’s image to be made 
and placed above the gate, where to this 
day it may be seen. 

Of course, there are ghosts at Carcas¬ 
sonne. 


SAN GIMIGNANO -ITALY 

Italy is a land of many and diverse in¬ 
terests ; and occupying a unique place, 
geographically, historically, architectur¬ 
ally and pictorially, are the Hill Towns, 
those cities older than Eome, more pic¬ 
turesque than Florence, possessing a char¬ 
acter and individuality that sets them 
apart from all other cities of Europe. 
While there are many things in common 
between these cities of the hills (those 
semi-mountains that range along the 
northern portion of central Italy) yet each 
possesses striking characteristics of its 
own. Perugia differs from Siena, and As¬ 
sisi from both, but absolutely separate and 
utterly unlike all other towns not only of 
the Hills, but of earth, the one absolutely 
medieval thing in all Italy is San Gimi¬ 
gnano. She is not of pre-Eoman time like 
her neighbor Volterra—that was old when 
the grass grew on the seven hills and be¬ 
fore the wolf was born that suckled 
Eomulus—but still San Gimignano is old 
when measured by the things that are of 
to-day, for very early in the years that 

47 


48 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


marked tlie wane of Roman power people 
came to live upon her hill and sheltered 
themselves behind her walls now fast 
crumbling to decay. As time went on she 
gathered her thousands of inhabitants 
from all over Italy and grew in power un¬ 
til she assumed to dispute with Florence 
and Siena for supremacy. And here to¬ 
day, in the empty shell of what was her 
greatness, is visualized to the present the 
history, not of Roman, but of medieval 
Italy. Here is written in her walls, her 
great civic building, and her curious tow¬ 
ers the story of all Italian cities of the 
Middle Ages, but written more plainly, 
more simply, more legibly than in any 
other record of that past. 

For certain temperaments the things 
that are gone possess an interest that even 
exceeds the fascination of the present. 
What were the men like who lived in the 
ages that are no more! How did they 
live, what did they talk about, what inter¬ 
ested them, what motives impelled or re¬ 
strained them, what were their pleasures, 
their griefs, their thoughts! What did 
they do, and how and why did they do it! 
These are among the most absorbing and 
entertaining questions that a man can set 



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SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 49 

himself to answer, for they lead the mind 
back into the romance of strange things 
and along ways where flowed a different 
life than our own. It was the lure of these 
questions that took me to San Gimignano 
—that and the mere love of the pictur¬ 
esque that I knew abounded there among 
the old buildings. 

Now I have a belief that environment is 
always an expression of life, and that 
therefore this medieval environment that 
here so perfectly persists, is an expression, 
an illustration, of the life that created it, 
just as electric lights and telephones ex¬ 
press the needs and character of our Twen¬ 
tieth-Century existence. So that, if we can 
rightly interpret these existing signs and 
symbols, these cathedrals, castle walls and 
streets of a medieval city, then shall we 
come to a comprehension of the life that 
therein found its expression; come to a 
comprehension of what manner of men 
they were who found such surroundings 
suited to their needs. And San Gimi¬ 
gnano, being a perfect survival of the past, 

a somber thought of the Middle Ages,’^ 
as Hutton calls it, can, therefore, introduce 
us to the men of the past, if we can only 
come to understand the language spoken by 


50 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


its strange streets, its art and its tradi¬ 
tions. 

Right at the outset we are met by an ap¬ 
parent inconsistency, not local to San 
Gimignano, hut which always confronts the 
student of medievalism. The art, the 
glass, the mosaic, the churches, speak of 
spirituality, of flesh restrained and soul 
aggrandized. But the strong towers, the 
barred windows, the prisons and the tor¬ 
ture chambers speak of mere savages, of 
animals without thought of God or love of 
man. Pray what sort of a man was this 
who thus expressed himself in these con¬ 
flicting ways, and wherein was he akin to 
us? 

We differ from him at both extremes: the 
ages have wrought upon man a steady 
pressure of emotional suppression which 
we call development, so that in the Twen¬ 
tieth Century we can no more perpetrate 
the cruelties of the Twelfth, than we can 
endow our churches with that subtle im¬ 
pulse to spiritual exaltation which even 
the most insensate nature is conscious of 
when within a dim and vast cathedral. But 
what sort of a man was this ancestor of 
ours who could build both a cathedral and 
a rack? In the first place, all his sensa- 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 51 

tions were keener, more vivid, because back 
of him were the Dark Ages of unrestraint. 
He loved more ardently, he hated more bit¬ 
terly, he worshiped more intently. He was 
a creature of passion and, therefore, of im¬ 
pulse; to will was to do; to desire was to 
possess; to suffer wrong was to take re¬ 
venge. But love, hate, lust, revenge and 
worship are all emotions, and our medieval 
man was, therefore, intensely emotional. 
Circumstances would combine to direct this 
emotionalism into other channels as well, 
but without diverting it from these mani¬ 
festations already noted. Intense love of 
beauty is but a product of the emotional 
temperament, and even in our own genera¬ 
tion sometimes goes hand in hand with 
those undesirable products of unrestrained 
impulse so often associated in the popular 
mind with the artistic temperament. 

I cannot but feel the conviction that, 
after all, there is nothing inconsistent in 
the medieval character, and that we owe 
its beauties and its vices, its exaltation of 
spirit and its licensed lusts, to precisely 
one and the same fact, and that is that the 
man of the period was uniquely and tre¬ 
mendously emotional. He must have felt 
more deeply than we to build a cathedral 


52 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


of such exquisite beauty as could-be in it¬ 
self an inspiration to worship; he must 
have been more emotional than we are to 
fight a tournament for the love of a lady, 
or to encounter the perils and labors of the 
crusades to rescue the burial place of a 
dead Christ. This emotionalism accounts 
at one and the same time for all his traits, 
both good and bad, and by that accounting 
makes his inconsistency more apparent 
than real, for it is the common source of 
all his impulses. It rather seems to me 
that in his manifestations the only thing of 
to-day that approaches the medieval man, 
is a boy. 

And San Gimignano explains the men 
who made it,—and makes alive their story. 
During the Middle Ages Italy differed 
from all the rest of Europe, not only be¬ 
cause it never wholly lost the influence of 
Roman culture, law and custom, but, be¬ 
cause of that influence, it was unaffected 
by the feudal system elsewhere developing. 
Rome was an Empire of cities. The rural 
community was a thing of no influence in 
government, and this condition continued 
in the peninsula after Rome’s power faded, 
so that the cities of Italy became independ¬ 
ent States, or, at least, influences, looking 



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SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 53 

to no protecting over-lord, as did tlie land- 
owners of much of the rest of Europe, who 
held their lands by feudal tenure. Else¬ 
where the cities were usually merely a part 
of the nation, a part of the land, but in 
Italy they were apart from the land, for 
the Germanic races occupied an entirely 
different and much more considerate at¬ 
titude toward the rural population than 
did the Eoman.* Thus we find in this little 
hill town all the paraphernalia of a State, 
and all the conflicting ambitions and fac¬ 
tions that go to disturb the peace of a 
State. Not only did it fight against other 
towns, but its rival families slaughtered 
each other in civil warfare. So we must 
think of San Gimignano in the Middle 
Ages, not as a city in the modern sense, 
but as an independent State, a nation. 

Its emotional inhabitants expressed their 
medieval temperament in wonderful fres¬ 
coed churches; in a town-house of un¬ 
surpassed beauty; in savage warfare 
against neighboring towns; in horrible tor¬ 
tures ; in the utterly unprecedented towers 

* Tliis of course is a very general statement, and in 
making it I am not unmindful of the many free cities of 
Germany, nor of the part cities everywhere played in the 
development of freedom. 


54 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


of defense which protected every man’s 
home against his neighbor; in an unre¬ 
strained impulse to murder that neighbor 
when profitable and convenient; and, 
finally, in a religious fervor that beatified 
as the city’s patron saint the most morbidly 
emotional figure in Italian history, the 
child Saint Fina. The city’s power 
reached its zenith in the twelve and thir¬ 
teen hundreds, when her aid was sought by 
the rival city-States of Florence and 
Siena. In 1300 Florence proposed an al¬ 
liance, and sent Dante, who was a politi¬ 
cian as well as a poet, as her Ambassador 
to San Gimignano to persuade its people 
to the compact. The town was a republic, 
after the manner, at least, of other Italian 
republics, and, after addressing the Coun¬ 
cil in the beautiful chamber of the city hall, 
as we would term the Palazzo del Comune, 
he stepped out upon the balcony, where 
the traveler is allowed to stand to-day, and 
so eloquently did he appeal to the people 
gathered in the square below, that his cause 
was won, and for many years thereafter 
San Gimignano followed the leadership of 
Florence. But these people of San Gimi¬ 
gnano were a quarrelsome folk, and year 
after year, when not fighting under the 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 55 

banner of Florence, were fighting with each 
other. One night in 1352 the then Chief 
Magistrate had two youths, members of a 
rival family, arrested on a charge of con¬ 
spiracy against the State, and soon, on a 
scaffold in the square, they poured out 
their blood. On the next moonless night 
the boys’ friends murdered the city’s ex¬ 
ecutive and burned his palace to the 
ground. Of such was the strenuous life in 
San Gimignano in the days when she was 
great. 

At this opportune moment of chaos Flor¬ 
ence calmly annexed the town for the 
peace of the people,” and that was the end 
of the little Eepublic’s independent career. 

It was in the turbulent years preceding 
the Florentine conquest that the city’s 
noble families built the strange fortress- 
palaces, that still linger on, asleep. As 
neighbor was so often at real war with 
neighbor, each palace became literally a 
fortress, and so arose these bleak stone 
towers, veritable strongholds against the 
enemy across the street. Some fifty of 
these towers marking the homes of that 
many noble families were built about this 
time, though now all but thirteen have been 
destroyed. Each patrician strove to build 


56 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


higher than his neighbor, until finally the 
city fathers built over the town-house a 
tower one hundred and sixty-seven feet 
high, which still stands, and higher than 
which no one was allowed to go. 

But in another and more subtle way than 
in her embattled residences and hall of 
state San Gimignano brings an accurate 
picture of the past into the view of the 
present. Not only did Italy inherit tradi¬ 
tions of Roman civic government, but she 
also remained, to a greater extent than she 
was conscious of, under the influence of the 
Pagan culture. Broadly put. Paganism 
was ever a creed of selfishness, and this 
selfishness medieval Italy grafted upon its 
Christianity, until St. Francis of Assisi 
struck it off, and thus arose those mystics, 
those hermits and anchorites, whose repu¬ 
tation for sanctity came not from good 
works, but from a morbid surrender to 
self; a sanctity whose aim was salvation 
for self through a complete withdrawal 
from contaminating humanity. 

The most curious instance of this trait 
of the medieval temperament is found in 
the records of San Gimignano, and the fact 
that its influence still persists and still 
mentally dominates the town, illustrates 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 57 

the fact that here in San Gimignano we 
have a medieval survival in the midst of the 
Twentieth Century. This is the story of 
St. Fina. I am going to quote the version 
given by Edward Hutton in his Siena and 
Southern Tuscany, though a more fantastic 
account is offered by Maurice Hewlett in 
The Road in Tuscany. 

Fina de’ Ciardi was born in 1238 of a 
poor yet noble family of San Gimignano. 
Till she was ten years old she was the de¬ 
light of her father’s house, bright as a ray 
of spring sunshine in the dark rooms there, 
beautiful as a flower fallen from the 
gardens of Paradise, happy as a little sing¬ 
ing-bird at morning. But in 1248 she fell 
ill, one of the most dreadful diseases 
of the Middle Ages befell her, and, 
thinking she was the innocent vic¬ 
tim of God’s anger on that tremendous 
century, she chose to lie on a plank of 
hard oak, refused a bed, and for five years 
offered herself to God in expiation of sins 
she could not name. Fearfully tormented 
by the devil, who appeared to her in his old 
form of a serpent, eight days before her 
death she was comforted by a vision of St. 
Gregory, who promised that on his feast 
day, 12 March, 1253, she should join him 


58 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


in Paradise. And it happened as he said. 
But when they would have buried her, they 
found her body so terribly mangled by dis¬ 
ease that already the worms devoured it; 
and when they would have lifted her from 
her plank, they found that her flesh ad¬ 
hered to it, and that, indeed, her body had 
died before her soul had taken its de¬ 
parture. Scarcely had she gone, when the 
devils, fearing doubtless her advocacy in 
heaven, ^ filled the air with whirl-winds; 
but against them, moved by angel hands, 
the bells of San Gimignano rang out in 
sweet confidence, so that the whirl-winds 
were calmed and the storm stilled. And 
when the people came to the house of St. 
Fina they found it full of the most sweet 
fragrance as of Paradise itself, and lo, 
the room where the holy body lay was filled 
with flowers; and, marveling at this, they 
presently went away.^ ” 

And the memory of this poor, morbid 
little girl yet dominates the life of San 
Gimignano, just as the strange, tall towers 
dominate the streets. And for these two 
reasons the town is a bit of visible me¬ 
dievalism injected into the present. 

Prom the standpoint of the picturesque, 
as Clovelly is unique in England, so has San 



AT THE WASHING POOL 
SAN GIMIGNANO 









SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 59 

Gimignano a place apart among the towns 
of Italy; yes, more, for among all the cities 
of Europe none presents just such an ex¬ 
traordinary appearance. It lies about 
thirty miles north of Siena, and when, driv¬ 
ing from the railroad station some seven 
miles away, the first view comes upon you, 
the sensation is one of utter astonishment 
that such a thing can be, an amazement 
that strengthens with nearer approach. It 
is a city so utterly different from all other 
cities that description is difficult; there is 
no common meeting-ground of expression, 
no vocabulary of comparison. It reminds 
you of nothing; it is one of the places of 
earth that are, by their strangeness, in a 
class by themselves. 

The low ridge is lifted against the sky 
crowded with houses, and then, above those 
houses, are reared not spires, nor domes, 
nor taller palaces, nor anything the like 
of which you have ever seen before, but 
great, gaunt, unadorned square towers, 
each more than a hundred feet in height. 
And all is penned within the narrow circle 
of the venerable and now fast disappearing 
walls. 

Perhaps alone among the towns of 
Europe San Gimignano is utterly without 


60 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


a modern quarter, a modern dwelling. Less 
than five thousand people now live among 
the strange buildings where ten times that 
number once had their homes. The rail¬ 
road is miles away; no clattering tram 
blots the medieval picture. You drive un¬ 
der a low gate and enter upon a dream. I 
know the fashion to speak of dream towns; 
I am not using the term in that way, but 
because the word most accurately defines 
the sensation that comes upon you as you 
pass within the place. The streets, the 
buildings, are so entirely outside the scope 
of experience, so at variance with the cus¬ 
tom of men and cities that, seeking a 
parallel, you are forced back upon those 
visions of the dozy hours, when who has 
not wandered in a city impossible to find on 
earth! Well, this is the city of sleep, of 
dreams. The streets have that same gray, 
empty look; archways leap purposelessly 
across the road and add to the mystery and 
the wonderful effect of shine and shadow 
that I have never seen equaled elsewhere. 
And as these silent ways wind in and out, 
always above them rise those monstrous 
towers, like a living, menacing presence. 

It might not be so with another, but as I 
walked alone, the silence, and the people 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 61 

only here and there, and the shadows, and 
the gates, and, most of all, the great towers 
that seemed to follow after, grew more and 
more a dream, and by and by there came 
that sense of fear that comes in dreams; 
and so to me San Gimignano will ever be 
the city of a dream. 

The town to-day is pathetic. Poverty 
has come with age to the city of beauti¬ 
ful towers.’^ Year by year her population 
has dwindled, and her wealth decreased. 
Only one noble family remains in the city, 
and occupies the palace of its ancestors. 
But it has fallen on evil times, and now 
the descendant of generations of proud and 
titled men and women gives dancing les¬ 
sons in the vast, half-empty palace of his 
fathers. Most of the other great houses 
are let out in apartments, and you can 
get a whole floor, with all its faded 
grandeur, for an absurdly small amount, 
for rents are low in San Gimignano. 

Little industry survives. There is the 
wine to be brought to market, and there are 
a few skilled artisans in wood, their little 
shops often found in the ground floor of a 
mansion whose ancient owners were 
makers of history. The young men go 
away, some forever, but more for the win- 


62 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUKOPE 


ter, coming back in the summer to tlie old 
home, which exercises its fascination upon 
them as it must on all who ever come within 
its strange charm. My guide, for instance, 
goes every winter to London, where he gets 
employment as a chauffeur and adds to his 
knowledge of English. The town is much 
too big for the small population that re¬ 
mains, and the resulting emptiness of the 
streets adds to the dreamlike atmosphere 
of the place. 

In the market-place is a little bookstand 
where are displayed for the young Italian 
translations of the most lurid of the Amer¬ 
ican dime novels of a generation ago. 
Texas Jack and The Pinkerton Spy are 
offered with flaming covers, and a choice 
assortment of others, illustrated with red 
and yellow pictures of Indians burning 
their captives at the stake, and other scenes 
from the supposed life of the American 
Great West. Unfortunately this is not 
unique in San Gimignano, as I saw these 
books everywhere in Europe, translated 
into every language, and displayed in the 
remotest and most inaccessible villages. 

The life of to-day is rather barren of 
amusements, and with but a limited range 
of interests. Annually there is a great 



IN A BYWAY 


SAN GIMIGNAXnv» 






SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 63 

celebration of the birthday of St. Fina. It 
is the one great event of the year. The 
people dress themselves in medieval cos¬ 
tume and parade around the crumbling 
walls; there are tableaux presenting scenes 
from her sad little life, and from all the 
neighboring villages the peasants flock to 
town to take part in the ceremonies, which 
end with mass in the cathedral. Aside 
from this there is little to break the monot¬ 
ony except the moving-picture show, which 
draws its crowds nightly. It is interesting 
to watch the audiences, for they so frankly 
express in their faces the passing emotion. 
Clearly they prefer the scenes of murder 
and revenge, while the humorous pictures 
excite but little attention. 

No housewife does her laundry work at 
home. Far below the wall-crowned hill on 
which the city stands, and just outside the 
arch of a ruined gate, whence a path leads 
downward, is the public washing-place. 
Under great arches in the hillside are dark 
pools, and here come the women carrying 
the weekly linen in baskets on their heads, 
and followed by their children, and here, 
with not a little song and laughter, they 
do their washing, with the children playing 
around them. These pools and arches, 


64 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


with the gate-blocked path, and the city 
towers above, form one of the most pic¬ 
turesque bits that can be found any¬ 
where. 

One evening, when the shadows of the 
towers lay deeper, and the dusk was com¬ 
ing on, out from the twilight came at 
double-quick a procession of men covered 
with long black gowns, over their heads 
pointed hoods, and down across their faces 
black masks with narrow slits for eyes and 
mouth. Each man carried aloft a torch 
whose yellow flame blended strangely with 
the shadows. Behind them, drawn by four 
shrouded men, was a bier where, under a 
black pall, a dead man lay. Thus, at even¬ 
ing, do they bury their dead. 

In the ancient days the citadel of San 
Gimignano was a stronghold that defied 
many attacks, but to-day it is only a home¬ 
stead with a garden of tomatoes and sweet- 
smelling herbs growing within the ram¬ 
parts. A boy opens the door and leads 
you along the garden paths to narrow 
steps, within what once were the castle 
walls, and when you climb them you find 
yourself upon the watch-tower, and all 
around the unobstructed circle of the far 
horizon, with those closely grouped towers 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY Gj 

of the city rising just before you, and the 
wide sweep of the sunlit valleys holding 
many towns within their hollows. 

Wonderfully interesting are the city 
hall and the square in which it stands. 
The former has a quaint courtyard 
with a fountain and an outer stair¬ 
way, which, set about with marbles 
and coats-of-arms, leads to an open 
loge, and thus to the council chamber. 
Not far from this square is the cathedral, a 
plain basilica of the Twelfth Century, but 
within, its walls are absolutely covered 
from end to end with the most extraor¬ 
dinary series of frescoes, centuries old. 
On one side are scenes from the Old Testa¬ 
ment, and on the other from the New. 
Much of the drawing is crude, and the 
treatment is astonishing in its naivete. 
Never shall I forget the scene where Noah 
had gone to sleep after drinking too much 
wine, nor the amazing mangling of the 
human form that is represented as mark¬ 
ing the culminating row at the Tower of 
Babel after the confusion of tongues. Hell 
is portrayed most literally, and close by is 
a pictured heaven where naked men with 
whiskers sit on uncushioned golden seats, 
and twang harps forever and forever, while 


66 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


smiling over at their suffering brethren on 
the other wall. 

Another marvelous series of frescoes of 
much greater artistic value than those in 
the cathedral, are on the walls of SanU 
Agostino. They portray the life of Saint 
Augustine. The first view shows Saint 
Augustine at school, and pictures a 
naughty boy horsed on the back of another, 
and being soundly spanked in the approved 
old English way. With his left hand the 
teacher points approvingly to the little 
Saint who, with book in hand, stands an 
interested spectator, upon his face an ex¬ 
pression of the most smug, exasperating, 
self-conscious righteousness I ever saw. 
If boys haven’t changed, and this picture 
is a true tale, it is safe to say that the little 
sinner under the rod smashed the Saint’s 
face for him, the first chance he got. This 
series of frescoes is said by competent 
authority to be worth coming from Amer¬ 
ica to see. And maybe so, but for me in¬ 
finitely more worth while is the wonderful 
picturesqueness of the town itself. 

There is one place in particular that 
makes a picture of extreme beauty. At the 
foot of a hill two ways meet, and one gives 
a glimpse of open country, and one of mys- 


SAN GIMIGNANO, ITALY 67 

terious steps and the old city gate with the 
tall towers beyond. For strange effects of 
light and shade, for wonderful composition 
of form, and for soft coloring, I know of 
nothing like it. 

There are other towns in Italy that are, 
perhaps, more beautiful—Amalfi, for ex¬ 
ample—and Bellagio, but beauty is one 
thing, and picturesqueness another and, 
sometimes, a different thing, and though 
they often are found together, they are en¬ 
tirely independent elements of a landscape 
or a city. And for complete and perfect 
picturesqueness I do not believe a town can 
be found in all Italy that is the equal of 
San Gimignano. 



In Bussaco you may live in a king’s 
house, and wander through a sacred grove 
where a Pope once said women should 
never go. And at luncheon in a royal hall 
you may see barefooted peasants bump 
their heads on the window glass as they 
stare in at you, because they do not know 
what glass is, and fail to perceive that it 
is there. And, later, you may watch these 
peasants dance queer dances in the open¬ 
ings of the forest, and hear them sing 
strange folk songs. And you may see 
many beautiful things, and many curious 
things, and look out at great views of 
mountains and plains, and tread old battle¬ 
fields. If your visit is in the winter, there 
will be no frost, for the mercury never 
goes below forty degrees, and if in sum¬ 
mer, there will be no heat. By night you 
will sleep amidst the great quiet of the 
woods, and by day you will be served elab¬ 
orate meals exquisitely cooked. It will 
cost you two dollars and sixty cents a day, 
and you will be glad you came, and happy 
to stay, and sorry to go. And all this will 

C8 


BUSSACO, PORTUGAL 69 

happen to you when you are in Bussaco in 
Portugal. 

I like to find places that are unusual, and 
that possess a distinct character all their 
own. And nowhere else in the world is 
there a spot in the least like Bussaco. To 
one familiar with California, it may sug¬ 
gest Del Monte, but added to natural 
charms greater than Del Monte’s is the 
remarkable historic association, and a local 
color as rich and varied as can be found 
anywhere in Europe west of Dalmatia. 

The readers of Ben Hur will recall the 
description of the sacred grove of Daphne 
situated near Antioch, and dedicated to the 
heathen goddess. Here at Bussaco is an¬ 
other sacred grove once dedicated to Chris¬ 
tian worship; shrines and temples filled the 
pagan wood, and shrines and temples 
crown the green heights of Bussaco and 
gleam through the deep, dark aisles of the 
forest. 

For a thousand years this strange, won¬ 
derful spot has been the domain of suc¬ 
cessive Christian orders. During the 
years from the Eleventh Century to the 
Seventeenth the Archbishops of Braga 
owned this territory, and hither came 
saints to pray, and sinners to escape an 


70 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

avenging law, for not only was God close 
to these solitary places, but here was de¬ 
clared sanctuary from the consequences of 
crime. Then, in 1636, the Archbishop gave 
the property to the Carmelites, and upon 
the outer wall the Pope placed his edict 
that whoso injured the trees and flowers 
within was anathema of the Church, and 
later, and on the other side the gate, a 
second bull appeared decreeing excom¬ 
munication against any woman who should 
ever dare to pass within. And to-day, 
through the open doorway, women come 
and go, and few pause to translate the 
quaint Latin of the old inscriptions, and 
none turns back. 

As the centuries passed on, and the 
world fell away from the old faith, the 
State looked covetously on this beautiful 
domain of the Church, and some fifty years 
ago boldly seized upon it as its own—and, 
after a thousand years, the long-robed 
friar prayed no more at the shaded shrines, 
nor knelt at the monastery’s altar. 

Later a Portuguese king called together 
the architects and artists of his kingdom, 
and he bid them build in this fairy grove a 
palace such as they thought the folk of fay 
themselves might build; it was to be the in- 




THE ONE-TIME ROYAL PALACE 

BUSSACO 









1 



BUSSACO, PORTUGAL 71 

carnation of a dream, of their ideal of a 
truly fairy castle in this enchanted wood. 

And in the midst of a clearing by the 
side of which fountains splash in a garden 
of palms, with giant cedars for a back¬ 
ground, sprang up a pure white marble 
vision, turreted and towered and girt about 
with strange fantastic carving; and within, 
upon the walls, are painted beautiful 
frescoes, and are placed rare tiles so fine, 
so costly, that few of the royal palaces of 
Europe can equal this strange, lonely castle 
in this lonely, beautiful wood. 

In 1888 it was finished. But the years 
move faster now. Gone was the priest, but 
gone now is the king. The monastery fell 
before the palace, and palace and king 
before the People, and the king’s house is 
now but a hotel—some say the rarest, most 
exquisite hotel in Europe, and some say 
in all the world. 

Bussaco is a mountain ridge, and ’round 
its base, many miles in circumference, runs 
the ancient wall. Within, and crowding to 
the very summit, is a forest such as can be 
found nowhere else. The remarkable cli¬ 
mate brings to perfection the trees of the 
temperate zone and those of semi-tropical 
regions. Cork trees, palms, cedars of 


72 PICTUliE TOWNS OF EUEOPE 


Lebanon, oranges, lemons, figs, mighty 
oaks and pines, unite in what competent 
authorities pronounce the greatest variety 
to be found in any region of the world. 

During the centuries it was a labor of 
love impressed on all the wandering monks 
to send to Bussaco’s sacred grove speci¬ 
mens of the rare plants and trees found in 
other lands, and, transplanted here and 
carefully tended, the result is one of un¬ 
precedented beauty. Within the forest the 
monks built numberless shrines and Sta¬ 
tions of the Cross, lonely dwellings on 
distant rocks, and sacred stairs that lead, a 
penitential way, to a far figure of the 
Christ. 

Threading all the forest are roads that 
go through beauty to wide views and 
strange places. One path climbs by a 
steep zigzag to a ruined watch-tower, and 
from its base a vast landscape is visible; 
to the east the mountains, and to the west 
a great plain stretches to the sea. An¬ 
other road ends at a beautiful gate that 
looks out upon a wide expanse of country 
where I can count twenty scattered vil¬ 
lages set round with olive groves and 
orange trees. 

There are, of course, in addition to the 


BUSSACO, POETUGAL 73 

pathways, well-kept main traveled roads, 
starting at the palace and running in many 
directions under the dense shade of lofty 
trees. Here the automobiles of the rich 
guests come and go, and Portuguese gentle¬ 
men astride absurd little donkeys take the 
view, for why should a gentleman walk? 
So the paths are happily deserted save for 
the few stray Englishmen who chance this 
way. The roads are well sprinkled by a 
contrivance not much larger than a barrel, 
mounted on solid wooden wheels and drawn 
by two little oxen. This is filled through a 
hole at the top by dipping up water from 
wayside pools with a large, long-handled 
dipper. I watched two men take turns at 
the dipper for half an hour, and even then 
their task was far from finished. 

Once, following a winding path that led 
far into the heart of the forest, where the 
light was pale green, splashed with bits of 
yellow sunlight sifting through the tangle 
of branches overhead, I heard afar the drip 
of water and, after a time, came to where, 
amid the trees, the Sacra Scala leads up the 
mountain side. These are broad stairs in 
ten successive stages of fifteen steps each, 
ending in the vision of a shrine, from un¬ 
derneath which pours out a brook that cas- 


74 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


cades along a rocky channel in the center 
of the great stairway. On each landing- 
place it broadens to a pool set round with 
palms and ferns and mossy marble seats. 
The long reach of balustrade and the pave¬ 
ment on the landings are inlaid with peb¬ 
bles of white and red and black in intricate 
design, and the whole effect under the dusk 
of the great trees, and amid the profound 
silence of the place, is singularly beautiful 
and impressive. 

For centuries penitent monks toiled up 
this way, and their day and its customs 
seemed as fixed and as permanent as hu¬ 
manity itself; and now they have vanished 
utterly, the kingdom, too, has passed, and 
gone is the power of king and priest and 
prelate; the shrines of centuries are empty, 
and there is none to worship at the de¬ 
serted altars; an alien from a land they did 
not guess, of a faith that they abhorred, 
sits in the sacred places and studies anew 
the lesson of eternal change. Time and 
again I found my way back to this strange 
sweet place, the lonesomest and most beau¬ 
tiful in all the miles of woods. 

But at every turn there is something to 
remind one of the priests that are gone. 
Seen through long vistas of stately trees. 





A PORTUGUESE BEGGAR 

BUSSACO 






BUSSACO, POETUGAL 75 

or through ivy-covered, half-ruined gate¬ 
ways, these teiiantless cells of long dead 
monks form as strange, pathetic and yet 
beautiful pictures as can be found in all the 
world. Through the broken door sunlight 
floods in on faint frescoes of the Christ; 
little cup-like hollows for alms still remain 
sunk in the window-sills; the sad, little 
bedrooms, the kitchens—all remain. It is 
the world and the ways thereof that have 
changed. 

One noon in the darkest recesses of the 
woods, where a faded shrine was given 
dimly back from a black pool beside it, I 
came upon a swarthy, gypsy-faced boy 
bending over a little fire of twigs toasting a 
bit of bread that was to be his dinner; a 
lonesome, pathetic little figure that so 
needed mothering. Somehow he seemed 
not of to-day, but to have been left behind 
by the days of monks and kings. 

One night a strolling band of musicians, 
two of them blind, wandered to the hotel, 
and all the evening they played and sang 
the strange Portuguese music. It seems 
all in a minor key, and has an odd trick of 
ending a measure on a lower note when you 
expect a higher one. The theme is usually 
short, but is repeated over and over in 


7G PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

difterent keys, but ever with a thread of 
sadness in the melody. The brightness 
that distinguishes the Spanish folk music 
has all gone out of it on this side the moun¬ 
tains. This strolling band of players also 
seemed to belong to some ancient yester¬ 
day as they vanished in the woods beyond 
the yellow circle of the hotel’s electric 
lights. 

Sunday morning brought to the sacred 
grove what in America would be termed a 
church picnic. Some two hundred peas¬ 
ants came toiling up the hill, the men in 
rusty black with commonplace, soft felt- 
hats of the same color, but the women gay 
as butterflies, the most gorgeously cos¬ 
tumed peasantry I have seen, save in Dal¬ 
matia and the lands that lie beyond. Each 
wore a short skirt made exceedingly full at 
the hips, where it was girded in like a huge 
ruff by a band of some contrasting color. 
Sometimes these skirts were black, some¬ 
times red, the red of the heart of a flame, 
sometimes intensest blue, sometimes 
orange, sometimes green. Over their 
shoulders were little shawls of the most 
vivid color schemes carried out in the most 
startling patterns it is possible to imagine. 
Then, over the head, and coming down 


BUSSACO, POETUGAL 77 

upon this glowing mass of color, was a 
handkerchief of some other dazzling hue. 
Every possible shade and combination 
were represented, so that the white path 
between the dull-green cedars seemed 
alight with some strange fire as the folk 
came upward toward the hotel. 

The men slouched shiftlessly, but the 
women walked erect and carried on their 
heads lunch-baskets and tall slender wine- 
jars of red clay. By ten o’clock they were 
scattered through the woods, eating break¬ 
fast in picturesque groups. A priest was 
with them, and, after the inevitable siesta 
at noon, when they stretched themselves 
out in the shade and slept, he gathered his 
flock around him and preached vigorously. 
And afterwards came the really interesting 
event of the day. A dozen musicians were 
in the party. The tennis court by the hotel 
was cleared, and in the center a circle was 
made in the crowd. The musicians stood 
at one side in a line, the music for one 
pinned on the back of his neighbor, while 
the man in front, who played the bass viol, 
had a boy to hold his notes. Besides the 
viol, there were three violins, three guitars, 
a banjo and several flutes. Into the circle 
stepped some fifteen couples. To a rather 


78 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


tuneless minor air a slow dance began. 
Three steps to the right, a pause during 
which the dancers stood rigid with arms 
bent above the head, three steps to the left, 
a pause, a swing half round, and then the 
men backed away from the girls, all clap¬ 
ping their hands together in time with the 
music. Forward again, and a slow swing 
completed the figure, which was repeated 
over and over again, the dancers singing 
the while in rather shrill voices, not at all 
comparable to the peasant voices of Italy 
or of Spain. 

Another dance was quicker (the one just 
described was incredibly slow), and was in 
march time, with all the intricate figure of 
a modern cotillion. So involved were these 
changes that it was impossible for the eye 
to follow them clearly, but the effect was 
very beautiful, enhanced by the tambour¬ 
ines decked with long, gay streamers of 
ribbon, used effectively by the girls. There 
was a song for this, as for all the dances. 

Then while the country folk were making 
ready for home, the little orchestra played 
national airs, ending with the Portuguese 
hjunn. As the familiar strains began, 
nearly all the men removed their hats. 
Some of the younger ones, however, con- 



THE FOREST STAIRS 
BUSSACO 














BUSSACO, POBTUGAL 79 

tinned to wear tlieirs with a surly, defiant 
air. Near me was one whose bearing was 
particularly offensive, and at about the sec¬ 
ond strain someone knocked his hat to the 
ground. A blow was the answer, and in an 
instant a lively battle was in progress be¬ 
tween the men with hats and those without. 
The hatless won, and the confusion lasted 
but a moment. It was explained to me 
that their feeling really marked the dif¬ 
ference between the lovers of the old 
regime and the more rabid adherents of 
the Republic; in some subtle way respect 
for the old national anthem seeming to 
stand for respect to the monarchy that for 
so long was in fact the nation. 

Very different was a ball given one even¬ 
ing by the guests in the hotel. There were 
conventional waltzes and two-steps, and in 
addition several dances peculiarly Por¬ 
tuguese. One especially was extremely 
beautiful. It was danced by four young 
women in the center of the floor, and they 
sang throughout the measure. It was full 
of motion and grace; at one point the 
dancers raised their arms above the head, 
snapping their fingers in time with the 
music; at another place they beat time by 
striking their palms together as in the 


80 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


peasant dance. But there seemed little in 
common between these refined, clear- 
featured people of the aristocracy, and the 
heavy, blank-faced peasants who were 
dancing on the lawn. 

In no other country of Europe is the 
physical and mental contrast between the 
upper classes and the peasant so marked 
as in Portugal. After reading Hume’s en¬ 
thusiastic comments on the Portuguese 
peasants, I was frankly disappointed in 
what I found. Eighty per cent, of the entire 
population of the country can neither read 
nor write, which means that practically the 
whole peasant class is densely ignorant. 
But not only are they untaught, but they 
impressed me as the dirtiest, most ill- 
favored and generally unattractive peas¬ 
antry in Europe. Their voices are harsh, 
their ways uncouth, and their play as boor¬ 
ish as the crude horseplay the Dutch peas¬ 
ants sometimes indulge in. 

In no respect are they comparable to the 
German peasant, particularly the keen¬ 
faced, sweet-mannered folk of Bavaria. 
The Swiss peasant is also immensely su¬ 
perior, as is the happy, handsome Italian, 
and the quicker-witted, more attractive 
Spaniard. 


BUSSACO, POBTUGAL 81 

The land is immensely fertile, the climate 
the finest in the world, but the people cer¬ 
tainly present, with their ignorance, in¬ 
capacity and vice, a governmental problem 
which may be beyond the power of the 
lately established Republic to solve. 

A hundred odd years ago history came 
this way, and from the intrenched heights 
of Bussaco Wellington's warriors heat 
back the French, and first demonstrated to 
the soldiers of Napoleon that they were not 
invincible. 

For days before the 27th of September, 
1810, Bussaco ^s day of iron and blood, 
Wellington’s troops had occupied the long 
ridge of the mountain, and his officers had 
filled every nook and corner of monastery, 
chapels and solitary dwellings, the monks 
sleeping, if at all, under the shelter of the 
trees. Fifty thousand allied Englishmen 
and Portuguese waited within the protec¬ 
tion of the walls the oncoming Frenchmen 
under command of Massena, who had never 
yet been beaten. All day long the legions 
of France charged up the mountain side, to 
be hurled back again by the crushing 
weight of English shot and shell. Only 
once did a thin line reach the summit, to 
melt to death before the bayonets of Well- 


82 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


ington’s reinforcements. And when the 
snn went down, six thousand dead lay upon 
the field, and under the trees the monks 
nursed the wounded. 

But I know no place where to-day strife 
and turmoil seem more incongruous. The 
friars of old laid so definite a spell of peace 
upon these great woods that it yet abides, 
and the visitor yields so completely to its 
charm that the cares of life and the worries 
of the world drop away, and, as the days 
go by, one begins to question whether it 
is worth while to go back, whether, after 
all, anything could be better than staying 
on forever. I am not at all sure but that 
to remain here too long would be to find 

all the rest of life an exile.” 


CINTRA- PORTVG\L 

t 

Seven green pools at Cintra, 

In the pleasaiice of the king, 

Where twilight sits and lingers 
Or flits on solemn wing. 

—Florence Wilkenson. 

I CAME to Cintra in the light of the full 
September moon. The low buildings were 
chalk-white among the green-black palms 
and dense masses of foliage crowding up 
the mountain side. Along a winding way 
the road led from the station through tun¬ 
nel-like gloom of far-reaching branches; 
out again into clear spaces, where the moon 
looked down; past a slanting street of steps 
lit part way up by a faint lantern casting 
strange lights and shades upon the mysteri¬ 
ously shadowed buildings; by an archway 
through which a dim, half-seen alley led to 
blackness; along the open road with a vivid 
view of the palace with its weird, gigantic 
chimneys; and finally into an irregular 
market-place that seemed a stage setting 
for some comic opera. Other market 
squares, particularly that of Middelburg, 
have seemed like this, but none so emi¬ 
nently. At one side is the entrance to the 

83 


84 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


ancient palace of the Moors, the palace 
whence only a few years ago poor Queen 
Maria Pia fled on that fateful morning of 
the revolution. Flanking this are two 
enormous palms set round with bench-like 
seats of quaint Moorish tiling; nearby a 
strangely twisted column of Manueline de¬ 
sign, half hid in the shadow; opposite, a 
three-story building of bright-blue glazed 
tile, and by it on the right a long, low, tiled 
hotel of varied colors and patterns; on the 
left, a salmon-colored house, and close at 
hand one of deepest crimson; in one cor¬ 
ner of the square a fruit-stand piled high 
with white and purple grapes and yellow 
pears, and red peaches, and pale-green 
melons, presided over by an old, old woman 
with strange, heavy earrings in her ears, 
and over her head a rainbow handker¬ 
chief. 

Everything was wonderfully foreign. To 
and fro went peasant women with short 
skirts and bright-hued waists, and head¬ 
dresses of a hundred colors. Out of the 
gloom a slim girl passed to the fountain 
with a dull-red water-jar carried on her 
thick, black hair. Men in long-tasseled 
caps came and went on little donkej^s. Un¬ 
der a window stood an enamored lad shout- 


CINTRA, PORTUGAL 85 

ing out courtship to his Heart’s Desire, 
who called responsively down to him, for 
thus only, saith Mrs. Grundy, may court¬ 
ship progress in these little towns of Por¬ 
tugal. Everywhere was the strange and 
the unfamiliar. And then, looking up, I 
saw by the white moonlight, crowning the 
mountain-top, the splendid walls of a 
Moorish stronghold, old these thousand 
years. 

Cintra is one of the world’s show places. 
For centuries poets have sung its beauty. 
Byron exclaims, Lo, Cintra’s glorious 
Eden! ” and in a letter to his mother says. 
The village of Cintra is, perhaps, in 
every respect the most delightful in 
Europe.” Southey, the poet, writes that 
Cintra is the most blessed spot in the 
habitable globe.” Beckford, who wrote 
Vathek, and built here a wonderful palace, 
says, The scenery is truly Elysian and 
exactly such as poets assign for the resorts 
of happy spirits.” ’Way back in 1450, a 
German bishop sighed on his return, for 
Cintra, most pleasant place,” and Bae¬ 
deker quotes an ancient Spanish proverb. 
To see the world and leave Cintra out 
is to go blindfold.” A modern Portu¬ 
guese poet thus praises the town: 


86 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


All, Cintra, blest abode, 

Who loves thee not; and who 
Can e’er forget in life 
An hour passed in thy lap? 

The late Queen Maria Pia would ask 
every stranger presented to her, “ Have 
you been long in Portugal? and then, 
Have you been at Cintra? and if the 
answer was ‘‘ No,” she would exclaim. 
Ah, then you have not seen Portugal! ” 
The little town of some five thousand 
people is about fifteen miles from Lisbon, 
and four or'five miles from the coast. The 
mountain of Cintra is a narrow, precipitous 
range about eight miles in length, rising 
eighteen hundred feet above the level of 
the sea. Near the highest point a rocky 
spur is thrown out into the valley, and here, 
clinging to the slopes, lies Cintra. Di¬ 
rectly over the town, and a thousand feet 
above it, upon the edge of an almost inac¬ 
cessible clitf, rise the long walls and ir¬ 
regular towers of the Moorish fortress. 
Beyond this is the exceedingly picturesque 
Pena Palace. 

Climatically, there is probably no other 
such favored country on earth as Portugal. 
Here at Cintra frost never comes, and, on 
the other hand, the elevation of the town, 



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CINTRA, PORTUGAL 87 

and tlie cool breezes from the sea, prevent 
extremes of heat. These breezes also bring 
moisture, with the result that the trees and 
plants of every clime flourish vigorously, 
and the gardens and groves of Cintra are 
conceded to be the finest in the world. All 
around lie the villas of people of wealth, 
who come here from England and nearly 
every country of the continent, and main¬ 
tain, summer and winter, a life that for 
splendor and luxury can scarcely be 
equaled in Europe. An added brilliancy 
was formerly given by the presence of the 
Court. The Queen Grandmother, Maria 
Pia, always lived in the Moorish palace in 
the town, and King Carlos made his home 
in the Pena Palace on the hill, and there his 
Queen kept her residence after the murder 
of her husband and eldest son. The result 
has been to make Cintra the most civilized 
and agreeable, as it certainly is the most 
beautiful village in Portugal. The word 
‘‘ civilized ’’ is used advisedly, for while 
the landscape of Portugal possesses much 
beauty, and the singular architecture 
known as Manueline exercises the spell al¬ 
ways felt at first encounter with the 
bizarre and the unusual, and the semi¬ 
tropic vegetation stirs with delight the 


88 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 


northern heart, yet there is no country of 
Europe where revolting poverty is so in 
evidence, where beggars are so persistent 
and so sickening in their paraded deform¬ 
ities, where dense ignorance is so general, 
and where ignorance and poverty have so 
brutalized the masses of the people. But 
Cintra is clean as well as beautiful, and 
the peasants have faces more intelligent 
and persons more cleanly than anywhere 
else in Portugal. Poverty here is not such 
utter and abandoned destitution, and there 
is a brighter and livelier mood than else¬ 
where in the nation. Among the local in¬ 
stitutions which may have contributed to 
this result is an official “ Beggars^ Day.’’ 
This is Saturday, and then it is Hark, 
hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are 
coming to town.” They come early, and 
they stay late. They come from villages 
miles av/ay, and they come from the lanes 
and the streets of Cintra. They come 
literally in rags and tags, but none in velvet 
gowns. By twos and threes, and by the 
score they come, till the market-place is 
tilled and the ways of the town are 
thronged by them. By the unwritten law 
that rules the day, every merchant con¬ 
tributes his dole, and at least two of the 


CINTRA, PORTUGAL 89 

hotels furnish bread and wine in a specified 
amount. But the other six days of the 
week the town is free from them, and the 
tourist can take his way unmolested by the 
motley crew that elsewhere dog his foot¬ 
steps continually. 

Long before the beauty of this little town 
on the mountain became known to the 
world, its attractions were acknowledged 
by the Moors, the most temperamental of 
any race that ever lived on European soil. 
It was not long after their conquest of the 
country in the Eighth Century that they 
established the seat of their power at Cin- 
tra, built a palace in the town, and, upon 
the impending clitf above, a vast im¬ 
pregnable fortress. Protected by this 
great castle, the exquisite life of the Moors 
flowed on for centuries till the Christian 
King of northern Portugal bribed the 
keeper of the citadel, and through this pur¬ 
chased treason the Mohammedans were 
surprised to ruin and death. As time went 
on, the palace in the market-place fell to 
ruin, and the fortifications on the mountain 
entered upon that slow process of decay 
which, persisting for centuries, still leaves 
these great walls among the most im¬ 
pressive ruins of Europe. 


90 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 


Four hundred years ago, when John I 
came to the throne and Portugal entered 
upon her brief career of greatness, he built 
out of the ruins of the palace in the town a 
queer-looking pile, which, with additions by 
later monarchs, stands to-day. Its most 
striking architectural features are the two 
curious chimneys, the most celebrated in 
Europe, that rise above the kitchen. They 
are great inverted hollow cones, entirely 
covering the room beneath. 

Royalty always occupied this palace, for 
Cintra has ever been the favorite home of 
Portuguese rulers. Now the republican 
government is in charge of the property, 
and officials show you through the queer 
old rooms, where legend and romance wait 
on every step. The ceiling of one room is 
black with painted magpies, each with a 
scroll in his beak on which appears a 
sentence which, freely translated, means, 
‘^With good intent.’^ They say that King 
John was once caught by his Queen, who 
had red hair, kissing a pretty maid, and 
that the unfortunate monarch stammered, 
‘‘With good intent, my dear; a fatherly 
kiss, that’s all.” But the Court were skep¬ 
tical, and all the ladies-in-waiting kept 
murmuring, ‘‘With good intent.” 



I 


WAYSIDE FOUNTAIN 
CINTRA 












CINTRA, PORTUGAL 91 

And then King John made a bold bluff, and 
adopted the words as bis motto, and 
painted this ceiling—a polite way of call¬ 
ing the ladies a lot of chattering magpies. 

Then there is another sad little room, 
where the boyish King Sebastian, in his 
untaught enthusiasm, decided on carrying 
the war into Africa that he was waging 
against the Moors. He sailed away with 
his army, and palace and kingdom knew 
him no more, for there came a day of 
bloody disaster, and the young king van¬ 
ished forever. His body was not among 
the dead, but he was gone, and whether he 
lingered in some far-otf prison, or had 
been put to death, his people never knew; 
no one will ever know. 

A sadder room is shown, little more than 
a cell, where, back in the middle of the six¬ 
teen hundreds, a king was imprisoned for 
twelve long years until he died, while his 
brother sat on his throne and became the 
husband of his wife. Back and forth 
through the years the caged King paced in 
front of the barred window, till his foot¬ 
steps wore in the brick floor a pathway still 
visible. 

And perhaps saddest of all the sad mem¬ 
ories that gather around this home of 


92 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


kings, is that of Queen Maria Pia, driven 
out in her old age from the home of her 
youth to die broken-hearted in Italy in the 
summer of 1911. 

Back in the closing days of the Fifteenth 
Century, while Columbus was carrying 
Spain ^s flag to the w^est. Da Gama was 
tracking unknown oceans to the east, with 
Portugal’s ensign at the mast. King 
Manuel had staked much on this voyage of 
the Portuguese navigator in search of the 
ocean way to India, and, as the months of 
absence lengthened into years, the King 
was wont daily to leave the palace in the 
town and climb to the highest point of Cin- 
tra’s hill, there to watch the empty sea for 
the great explorer’s sails. Finally he 
vowed that if Da Gama did return in tri¬ 
umph, he would build on the spot where he 
had watched so long, a monastery that 
should fittingly express his gratitude; and 
when at last the ships showed white against 
the blue, he kept his word, and part of that 
monastery is now incorporated in that re¬ 
markable building piled upon the crag, and 
known as the Pena Palace. I have never 
seen a more romantic spot. On its rocky 
height it lords it over a vast park. From 
the entrance the road leads through gar- 


CINTRA, PORTUGAL 93 

dens of beauty, over arched bridges, and by 
the side of the mysterious Seven green 
pools of Cintra,” shadowed deep by palms 
and trees strange to northern eyes. Pres¬ 
ently the great walls of the Castle tower 
over you, a gateway opens in the rock, and 
across a drawbridge and through a twi¬ 
light passage you come upon a platform 
where before you are two of the strangest 
gateways set in the palace wall—gates that 
are a mass of twisted carving and queer 
and intricate odd design. These gates let 
upon a courtyard with outside stairways 
and Moorish towers, turrets and arches 
everywhere. 

Here was the favorite home of the late 
King Carlos, and here, after he was done 
to death by a bomb, lived his widowed 
Queen, and Manuel, the boy King. After 
leaving the palace in Lisbon at dawn on 
that October day in 1910 that marked the 
beginning of the Republic, Manuel drove 
his car to Cintra and, for the last time, up 
the winding road to the Pena Palace. It 
was only eight o’clock when he burst into 
the room where the Queen Mother was at 
her desk. She was in the act of signing 
her name to a certificate of bravery ac¬ 
corded a Norwegian captain who had 


94 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


rescued some sliipwrecked Portuguese sail¬ 
ors. She tossed the pen from her as she 
rose, and where it fell it lay for months. 
Absolutely nothing in the Palace was 
changed. The caretakers installed by the 
Republican government were under strictest 
orders not to disturb the slightest detail. 
Dead flowers stood in a dusty vase upon the 
table; the European magazines lay here and 
there, and the newspapers of Lisbon and 
Madrid, as well as the London Mail and the 
Paris edition of the New York Herald. .The 
signature to the captain’s certificate was 
still unfinished, and the ink dry in the 
opened well. Over the Queen’s bed still 
hang, signed with loving inscriptions, 
photographs of the murdered King Carlos, 
and their two boys, one of wdiom died with 
his father. It is a wonderfully homey and 
unpretentious palace. In the chambers is 
black walnut, marble-topped furniture; 
there are no electric lights, and no bath¬ 
rooms. Manuel’s room is very boyish, full 
of the little valueless belongings of a boy. 
Photographs, some swords and odd bits of 
armor, with a picture or two, make up the 
decoration. Under the bed is a big tin tub 
for his bath. A fireplace with an easy-chair 
before it; some books upon a shelf; a tele- 



THE MOORISH PALACE 
CINTRA 


















CINTRA, PORTUGAL 95 

phone near the door, that is all. Throughout 
the entire palace nearly everything is just 
as it was on that fatal morning, save that 
royalty is gone. Only the royal cat or its de¬ 
scendant remains, pathetic sight, curled up 
on the window-sill in the Queen^s chamber, 
waiting the mistress who will never come. 

One of the chief charms of Cintra con¬ 
sists in the innumerable beautiful walks 
and drives that bring fresh interest to each 
day spent there. Most popular of these is 
the drive of a few miles to the gardens of 
Monserrate, that are said to be unequaled 
in the world. Nowhere but in the unique 
climate of Portugal can grow in perfection 
the plants and trees of the tropics and of 
the temperate zone as well, so in the cen¬ 
tury since Beckford ransacked the world 
to find specimens for these gardens, which 
he laid out at fabulous cost, the trees and 
vines, and shrubs and flowers he planted 
there have developed into wonderful 
beauty. The property is now owned by the 
estate of Sir Frederick Cook, who spares 
no money to keep and increase the splendor 
of the place. There are palms and bam¬ 
boos; oaks and evergreens; orchids and 
roses; vines that are perfect sheets of 
strange, intense color; uncanny-looking 


96 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


flowers lifting tlieir blossom of flame or 
lavender straight from the earth; queer 
trees with long, pendulous blooms of 
scarlet; ponds where pink and blue lilies 
grow; Roman benches whence are views 
of mountains and the passing ships at sea; 
and in the midst the beautiful Moorish-like 
house where Sir Frederick lives. 

Another delightful walk takes you in the 
opposite direction, where there is a little 
pink town that seems to have strayed out 
one day from Cintra, and, nestling down 
contentedly under the mountain, never re¬ 
turned. Tall palms grow there, and 
glossy-leafed magnolias which even in mid- 
September were sending out a few huge, 
cup-like, creamy flowers. Along the street 
at the mountain's foot, the houses cling to 
terraces covered with ivy and roses of 
cream and pink, led up to by the most pic¬ 
turesque steps imaginable. At one point the 
rock is hollowed out, and here a fountain 
fills a large basin. Around are broad stone 
seats, and nearby a tiny public garden, 
where grow more beautiful begonias than I 
ever saw before, even in Holland. Double 
shell-pink blossoms, each as large as a rose, 
hung in clusters of six or more, literally 
covering the plant. They were in endless 


I 


CINTRA, PORTUGAL 97 

variety, white, red and white, and deepest 
crimson. Then there were single ones that 
glowed with flame, like cadmium, and all 
the shades of pink and red in rare pro¬ 
fusion. 

When tired of the land one can seek the 
sea. Trolley-cars made in Philadelphia 
run down to the shore, indented here by a 
little cove not more than five hundred feet 
wide, at the mouth of which thunders in a 
most magnificent surf. Solid walls of 
green water ten feet high stretch at times 
from shore to shore, and, as they break, the 
whole little bay becomes a furious welter 
of foam. Beyond this cove reaches the 
westernmost land of continental Europe, 
and along its verge is a glorious walk 
cooled with the spray dashed from the long- 
backed waves that break on the rocks be¬ 
low. 

But the most splendid thing in Cintra is 
the Moorish ruin hanging high above the 
town. The road that swings far round in 
long, gentle grades is the easiest way by 
which to reach the summit, but lovelier by 
far is the path that leads up from the 
market-place. It leads even within the 
town, into such quaint corners of toppling 
houses, and by such charming wayside 


98 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


fountains, and stone walls, and under ivj- 
grown trees, and up moss-covered steps cut 
in the stone. And once it enters the won¬ 
derful park it all but loses itself in a tangle 
of giant rocks and dark forest vistas. It 
takes its course right through a bit of an 
ancient mosque, where a great tree now 
grows from the center to a height far above 
the roofless walls; and by the side of a rock 
where the cross is cut above the crescent, 
and a death’s-head over both. At last it 
leads out upon the overhanging cliff, and 
through empty chambers to the ramparts 
that for so many centuries guarded the 
Moorish town below. The long walk along 
these battlements seems to me to be the 
finest in the world. To the right is a sheer 
drop to the town and the plain a thousand 
feet below, and beyond the plain, miles and 
miles of blue Atlantic, where the liners 
track for home. Back of you is the Tagus, 
reaching from the sea to where Lisbon lies 
clear-cut in the bright light, and on beyond 
to the great dim mountains that mark 
where Spain begins. On the left, a vast 
confusion of enormous rocks, and on the 
greatest of them all, the tremendously ef¬ 
fective pile of the Pena castle, and just be¬ 
yond that, outlined against the sky, a 


I 


CINTRA, PORTUGAL 99 

gigantic statue of Da Gama. Right ahead, 
zigzagging up and down and in and out, and 
marked with tower and turret, the walls 
themselves extend. And if you have the 
gift of imagination you can hear the swish 
of the silken robes of the Moors, and re¬ 
construct the splendid pageant that came 
and went the ways you tread, in that time 
that once was so very real, so very vital, 
so full of splendid color, and that now has 
gone so utterly, leaving no more impress 
than a dream at dawn, save for gray ruins 
like these that still stand in Spain and 
Portugal, monuments to a day that is done. 




Over the desert that is Castile, along an 
immense landscape done in sepias and 
swept bare as by some great wind, under 
a sky bare as the world, with every cloud 
washed away, you come upon the rock of 
Toledo. The yellow-gray walls of the 
fortress city are so blended in the gray- 
yellow of the rock and the surrounding 
sands that they seem to have been made by 
nature, not man, and to have been cor¬ 
roded into the outline of roofs and towers 
by the action of immeasurable years. The 
town partakes of the desolation of the 
desert of which it seems a part, and town 
and desert are blended into one, and into 
a part of the far sweep of painted land¬ 
scape by the hot sun perpetually burning 
the world to dull browns and tawny yel¬ 
lows. 

Along the great height of this central 
plateau of Spain the winds are ever sweep¬ 
ing, and long streamers of dust mark where 
over an undistinguishable road some peas¬ 
ant, priest or cavalier is urging forward 
his donkey toward the city gates. Some- 

100 





TOLEDO, SPAIN 101 

times a denser column of dust shows 
where a heavy, gypsy-like wagon is drawn 
through the sand by a long train of mules 
in tandem; and sometimes a pack-train of 
mules, each almost buried from sight be¬ 
neath his load, toils up from the plain. 
Save for these signs of life, the treeless 
waste is empty, and lonely in a vast old 
age Toledo appears to sit and brood upon 
her mighty past, her insufficient present, 
and the problems of her future. 

I have never been so fascinated by a 
town. She does not seem human, but like 
some wild thing of the desert, crouching on 
a rock, bereft of her children, too old to at¬ 
tack, but untamed still. She seems to have 
endured forever; to have been created with 
the rocks; to know all things, but with a 
wisdom she cannot express. Nothing I 
have ever seen seemed so old, so a part of 
eternal nature. She is the Sphinx of 
Spain. 

Not beautiful like Segovia, nor bright 
like Seville, she differs from all other cities, 
and in that difference lies her compelling 
spell. She is absolutely romantic; her 
storied yesterdays are yet so palpable, so 
apparent, that her history, with all its 
splendid color, becomes very real and very 


102 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

present. Around her rock the yellow 
Tagus crawls, and you come to her gates 
across one of the beautiful bridges of the 
world. For centuries through its em¬ 
battled entrances have come and gone races 
and peoples and civilizations. Only the 
Twentieth Century has not yet entered in. 

First came the Goths, and from that dim 
and warlike age a bit of the ancient wall 
still survives; then, in the Eighth Century, 
sweeping up from the South, came that ir¬ 
resistible tide of Moslem invasion that 
made of Spain a Mohammedan possession. 
It is now twelve hundred years since the 
Caliph of Damascus laid his iron hand 
upon the land and converted it into an 
Arabian province. Geographically the 
westernmost country of Europe, its his¬ 
tory, tradition, architecture, and the at¬ 
mosphere these things create, are of the 
East, the East of the Arabian Nights, of 
romance and of beauty. 

And the conquest of the Moors was really 
that of civilization over barbarism, for the 
scattered tribes of Spain were in no sense 
a coherent nation, while the victorious 
Saracen brought a culture, an art, a refine¬ 
ment that was then at its very flower. Only 
in the far north did the Christian power re- 



AN OLD GATEWAY 
TOLEDO 












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I. 


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TOLEDO, SPAIN 103 

main unshaken. Men of Damascus were 
assigned to Cordova, Algeciras was settled 
by people from Palestine, Egyptians were 
given western Portugal, Syrians were lo¬ 
cated at Granada, and followers of the 
Prophet from Arabia and Persia came to 
live in Toledo/^ For three hundred years 
this exotic people and civilization flour¬ 
ished here, and even to this day there are 
little shops where still is made the ex¬ 
quisite work of inlaid gold on steel known 
the world over as Toledo ware, an Oriental 
art that is elsewhere largely lost. 

But in 1085 the armies of the Christian 
kingdom of Castile, under the leadership 
of the great Alfonso, drove out the crescent 
from Toledo, and began that four hundred 
years of warfare which was finally to end 
with the total expulsion of the Moor from 
■ the peninsula. 

In 1492 Granada fell, and thus, just at 
the moment when Spanish valor overthrew 
this empire of the east, Spanish courage 
was giving the world an unknown empire 
in the west. But during all the darkness of 
the early Middle Ages, when only the mon¬ 
asteries kept alive the light of civilization 
throughout a barbarous Europe, the Moor¬ 
ish kingdom of Spain stood for the world 


104 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


best in art, in literature, in architecture, in 
agriculture, in poetry, in science, and in 
those amenities of life that make existence 
gracious and agreeable. 

This northern Spain differs in every¬ 
thing from the Spain of the south, in stern¬ 
ness of architecture, for its cities were built 
for war; in the racial blood of its peoiDle; in 
its grim, bare landscajDe, so different from 
the blossoming land of the south; and in 
the very language of its inhabitants. The 
Castilian tongue speaks the purest Span¬ 
ish, and so different is it from the dialect of 
Andalusia, that a man from Toledo is not 
always understood in Seville. In the 
north, for instance, the word alcazar, 
meaning fortress or stronghold, is pro¬ 
nounced Al-catlf-ar, with a sort of lisp, 
while in the south it is spoken as Al-caz'-ar. 

But northern Spain and southern have 
one thing very much in common, both alike 
give the same two conflicting impressions. 
Her cities, perfect pictures of medievalism 
that no other country can show in such 
numbers, speak of age, and all the land 
seems old, so old. But, on the other 
hand, her people seem perpetually young. 
Young because of the dominant emo¬ 
tionalism of their character, for emo- 


TOLEDO, SPAIN 105 

tionalism, in race or individual, is the 
certain test of youth. The Spaniard’s 
almost trance-like intensity of worship 
within his great cathedrals that both ex¬ 
press and incite emotion; his love of ro¬ 
mance, of contemplation; his contempt for 
commercialism, all bespeak the Spaniard as 
highly responsive to that emotional appeal 
which to the Anglo-Saxon comes less and 
less etfectively with the years. No better 
proof of this could be found than in the act 
of a Spanish mob which, after the treaty of 
Paris, stoned a statue of Columbus as pun¬ 
ishment for his having discovered the new 
world they had lost. This was the act of 
men who will ever be boys. 

In Seville I was notified that the steamer 
on which my passage was booked from 
Gibraltar had been withdrawn, and it be¬ 
came necessary for me to engage a room 
on a ship of another line. The agent was 
not at his office, but at his Club (it was 
eleven a.m.). I followed him there and ex¬ 
plained my errand. But I can only issue 
you a ticket at the office,” he said. I told 
him I was obliged to leave on an early 
afternoon train, and would he not take my 
money and wire the Gibraltar office for 
reservations. But I don’t care to go 


106 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


back to the office to-day; wait/^ said hfe^ 

wait till to-morrow.’^ Of course I did 
not wait, and of course he lost his com¬ 
mission on the sale of the ticket. Again 
it was the act of a boy, who had irretriev¬ 
ably fixed a boy’s idea of relative value. 
So, here in Spain, the most ancient-looking 
land in Europe, live the youngest, because 
the most medieval and emotional, race 
upon the continent. 

The most impressive city in Spain is To¬ 
ledo, and the most wonderful place in To¬ 
ledo is by the bridge Alcantara. The pic¬ 
turesqueness of its towers is unsurpassed; 
the view of the river and its wild and som¬ 
ber gorge; the great cliffs on the opposite 
bank piled high with the city’s walls and 
buildings; the shattered Moorish castle 
dominating the city from the hill; the 
strange, foreign procession continually 
passing and repassing across the bridge, 
all combine to make one of the strangest, 
wildest and most fascinating pictures to be 
found in Europe. 

Toledo’s story is one great romance of 
pleasure and horror. Back in the remotest 
days, after Rome had been driven from the 
city by the Gothic invaders, legend after 
legend glitters on the page of history. Just 



1 


A BRIDGE OVER THE TAGUS 

TOLEDO 













TOLEDO, SPAIN 107 

as the sunset hour is the most brilliant of 
the day, so the Gothic kingdom of Toledo 
reached its most splendid moment just as 
it fell crashing before the Moslem hosts. 
Don Roderick, last of the Goths, made 
memorable his reign by a tournament un¬ 
equaled in all the gleaming annals of 
chivalry. From all the known world his 
guests assembled. There was the Duke 
of Orleans with three hundred cavaliers; 
also four other Dukes of France with each 
four hundred armed retainers. Then the 
king of Poland came with a luxurious 
train; and six hundred gentlemen of Lom¬ 
bardy. Rome sent three governors and fif¬ 
teen hundred knights. The Emperor of 
Constantinople and his brother came, as 
well as a Prince of England with great 
lords and fifteen hundred cavaliers. From 
Turkey, Syria and other parts nobles and 
princes to the number of five thousand 
came without counting their followers, and 
Spain alone furnished an influx of fifty 
thousand cavaliers.’^ Palaces were built 
for the royal guests, and not a visitor was 
allowed even to furnish his own arms or 
horses; ten thousand tents were set up 
upon the plain, and there lived the citizens 
of Toledo, their homes turned over to Don 


108 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


Roderick’s guests. Feasting and music 
and the dances that even then distinguished 
Spain filled out the huge round of pleasure, 
while daily went on the jousts between the 
very flower of the world’s chivalry. 

And,” adds the chronicle, the slain 
were all buried at the expense of the 
State.” 

But then a little while, and the Moors 
were at the gates, and the crescent had re¬ 
placed the cross upon the city walls. Only 
half-conquered, however, were the people, 
and, to punish them, the renegade Chris¬ 
tian who was governor some fifty years 
after the conquest, conceived a punishment 
so dreadful, so mysterious, so deadly and 
so still, that history can furnish no parallel. 
A great feast was planned in honor of the 
Sultan’s son, a guest of the Governor, and 
a thousand of the nobles, the chief mer¬ 
chants and the richest men in Toledo were 
bidden to the castle on a certain night. 
Velvet carpets strewn with roses led to the 
door, Arabian slaves caught the jeweled 
bridles as the guests alighted from their 
horses. From the ante-room the visitors 
were asked to pass out, one by one, through 
the narrow door that led to the dim gardens 
where the nightingales sang amid the bios- 


TOLEDO, SPAIN 109 

soms, and the fountains splashed to the 
music of the lutes. And back of that door 
stood a great black mute with gleaming 
simitar, and, as the nobles of Toledo passed 
through slowly, one by one, instead of the 
king’s son, they met Death swift and silent 
and sure. And at dawn a thousand men 
lay dead, and Toledo had been punished. 

Three hundred years of romance, battle, 
murder and sudden death, and then the 
mystic figure of the Cid crosses the great 
bridge, first governor of the reconquering 
Spanish power. For succeeding centuries 
great names move down her history, and 
stories of incredible romance, and figures 
of gleaming splendor fill the record of her 
days. The beauty, the color, the gold and 
purple of it all! Kings and queens and 
cardinals, and plots and counterplots in 
one great matchless, thrilling pageant, like 
some play that lasts for centuries. And the 
stage setting is still all unchanged. Dim, 
empty ways that plunge among tall and 
toppling buildings; buildings with great 
blank walls pierced only here and there, 
with small barred windows that frown 
down on the narrow, twisting streets; tiny 
squares where sharp shadows show on the 
sunlight; the black-gowned priest, the 


110 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


capped peasant sitting sideways far back 
on the haunch of his donkey, the black-eyed 
woman with her fan, all is of yesterday, 
and, truly, when we cross the bridge we 
go back into the very past, visualized to 
our Twentieth-Century eyes in all its pic¬ 
turesqueness. 

The cathedral is the most famous build¬ 
ing in the city, and I had read of it as the 
most beautiful in Europe. I had pictured 
it dim and mystical, and had longed for its 
seven hundred and fifty painted glass win¬ 
dows, famed through the world, those 

jewels aglow through the great cathe- 
draPs dusk.’’ But it was a distinct disap¬ 
pointment. To me the glass was crude and 
raw, and the whole building by far too 
light. Then, too, whitewash has been hor¬ 
ribly applied to the whole interior, thereby 
stripping it of all that wonderful softness 
and richness of color that can only be 
gained by time. Besides this, in common 
with all Spanish cathedrals, the choir oc¬ 
cupies the very center of the building, com¬ 
pletely preventing that full view from end 
to end so necessary to an impression of 
grandeur. 

But in detail it is, like St. Mark’s at 
Venice, a museum of beautiful things. 



THE BURDEN BEARER 
TOLEDO 

















TOLEDO, SPAIN 111 

There is, however, this difference, that 
while St. Mark’s is a museum of all ages, 
all countries, all arts, the Spanish church 
is more an epitome of the plastic and 
graphic arts of Spain. All around are the 
tombs of kings and cardinals and the men 
who made the history of Spain, for a time, 
the history of the world. Among the 
tombs, all covered with the customary pom¬ 
pous words of eulogy, one stands out star¬ 
tlingly. On a plain slab are these words, 
‘‘ Here lie dust, ashes and nothing,” and 
it covers the grave of a great cardinal, 
dead these centuries, the inscription being 
chosen by him when at the point of death. 
No name, no date, ‘‘ dust, ashes and 
nothing. ’ ’ 

Very different in its vast elaboration of 
rich carving is the tomb of Cardinal Men¬ 
doza, favorite of Queen Isabella. The 
great Queen was very near akin in spirit 
to England’s Elizabeth, and when the Car¬ 
dinal died she announced that he was to be 
buried near the altar. But the Archbishop 
said No.” And for many a day Queen 
and Prelate were at deadlock over the mat¬ 
ter. But one night Isabella gathered ma¬ 
sons and stone-cutters in vast array, and, 
taking the Cardinal’s body with her, she 


112 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


went at midnight to the dark cathedral, 
and, as the flaming torches cast weird half- 
lights about the sacred spot, she directed 
the workmen and paused not till a suitable 
tomb had been excavated, and the Cardinal 
laid at rest within. 

One of the strangest of things in this 
strange city is the little church, the Christo 
de la Luz. Apparently the building (it 
is only some twenty feet square) is en¬ 
tirely Moorish, and, small as it is, is said 
to be as perfect a bit of Oriental workman¬ 
ship as can be found anywhere in Spain, 
and yet, beneath the Moorish tracery can 
be seen quite a bit of crudely drawn Sixth- 
Century work of the Christian Goths. 
There is a legend of this church which, 
though told by every writer, must be re¬ 
peated. Before the Moorish conquest, 
when the tiny church was used for Gothic 
worship, there hung upon the altar a 
miraculous image of the Virgin. When it 
became plain that the city must fall, the 
attendant priest broke open the wall, and 
within he placed the image and the lamp 
that burned before it, and, replacing the 
stones, departed. Three hundred years 
and more passed by, and the Cid led the 
conquering soldiers of the cross along the 


TOLEDO, SPAIN 113 

street where stood the church. Suddenly 
his horse refused to move, and, when 
pricked with the spur, knelt in the dust be¬ 
fore the bare wall of the chapel. The Cid 
immediately ordered the wall to be opened, 
and there was the image and before it the 
light still burning. 

Strong-willed though Isabella surely 
was, she did not always have her way. She 
and Ferdinand determined that they would 
build as their mausoleum the great church 
of San Juan de los Reyes. But the Arch¬ 
bishop spoke another no. They could build 
the church, but buried they must be in the 
cathedral, the primate church of all the 
Spains. When that edict of the Church 
went forth, the work on the building 
stopped, but it had already neared comple¬ 
tion, and here King and Queen would come 
to hear mass, sitting in a most curious little 
screened gallery that takes the place of a 
capital around the top of one of the great 
pillars that uphold the roof. There is won¬ 
derful carved stonework in this church 
of the kings, carving made possible by the 
soft character of the Toledo stone, which 
only hardens after long exposure to the air. 
On the unfinished-looking fagade hang in 
great festoons hundreds of rusting chains 


114 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 


found on Christian captives in the Moorish 
cells at Granada. And, by the way, the 
capture of Granada was so culminating an 
event in the lives of Ferdinand and Isabella 
that even the Archbishop of Toledo finally 
consented that the King and Queen might 
be buried in the cathedral there instead of 
in the primate church of Toledo. 

It is a poverty-stricken population of 
some twenty thousand that now lives within 
the city walls. There is no industry save 
the making of Toledo blades, and the fash¬ 
ioning of bracelets, pins and buckles in the 
beautiful work of gold on steel for which 
the town has so long been famous. Much 
of this work is done in small shops, but 
there are two or three factories where the 
art is carried on upon a larger scale, and 
here the ordinary workman receives very 
small pay indeed, while an artist, a man 
who can originate the wonderful designs 
and deftly execute them, is paid three or 
four times as much. The hours are from 
seven in the morning till noon, and from 
three to seven in the evening, the three 
hours’ intermission being spent in sleep. 
Laborers on the street get as high as one 
peseta, and housemaids seven or eight 


TOLEDO, SPAIN 115 

pesetas a month. And the price of neces¬ 
saries is high. How do they live! I do not 
know, and yet there seems to the casual 
observer greater happiness, more laughter, 
more lightheartedness, and less care than 
among men and women here at home, whose 
wage scale is infinitely higher. 

It is a simple life, a primitive one. At 
one point where two streets meet, a cross 
upon the wall marks as curious a shrine 
as can be found in Europe, a shrine to the 
Madonna of the Pins. Underneath the 
cross is a glass box, in the lid a narrow slit 
is cut, and a padlock holds down the cover. 
To this shrine resort girls who want hus¬ 
bands. With a prayer they drop in the box 
a long pin for a tall husband, a short pin 
for a short husband, a black pin for a rich 
one, and if a very rich one is desired a lit¬ 
tle piece of money. Every evening the box 
is emptied by a priest. The afternoon I 
saw it I counted twenty-six white pins of 
all sizes, three black ones, and two copper 
coins. 

No one who has felt the magic of this 
worn and ancient city, and who has seen 
the quaint and medieval life that still 
lingers there, but can indorse the wish 
of that poet who over its gates wished to 


116 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUEOPE 


write these words: In the name of poets 
and painters; in the name of dreamers and 
students, civilization is prohibited from 
laying her destructive and prosaic hand 
upon a single one of these stones.” 


R,ON DA* SPAIN 

I WANTED to see Ronda wake; to see the 
life that stirs at dawn move through the 
ancient streets; I wanted to watch the 
color that comes with early day play with 
the shadows kept from the night under 
high towers and-down narrow alleys. 

When I left the hotel a dim moon hung 
overhead and a star or two was still 
shining. In the east red streaks lay 
against a steely sky. In the streets the 
electric lights were burning, but beyond the 
yellow zone of their glare a blue twilight 
was forming. Near the hotel there were 
singing and loud talking in a drinking- 
shop, through the open door of which one 
could look into the cellar-like place, where 
rows of barrels took the place of bottles. 
Presently the men left in twos and threes, 
the keeper clanged the door and put out the 
light, and the street fell silent. 

From an alley a small boy on his way to 
work hurries across the square, with his 
luncheon in a basket of native weave. With 
a clatter of hoofs on the cobblestones a 
long train of donkeys comes up from the 

117 


118 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


dusk, tlieir great burdens strapped tightly 
on their hacks. A man who has lain on 
the pavement by a wall asleep, with his hat 
over his face, sits up, and then stretches 
out again for another nap. Now and then 
a boy on a mule rides into the picture and 
out again. At a cafe opposite, the white- 
aproned waiters are putting out little 
tables and chairs. If you go over there 
and sit down and clap your hands, one of 
them will bring you thick, black coffee and 
sugar. This clapping of hands to secure 
service, a custom everywhere prevalent in 
Spain, must be an inheritance from Moor¬ 
ish times, for the habit is purely Oriental. 

It is getting lighter now, and the arc 
lamps go out. In the zenith the sky is 
blue, but along the streets the light is still 
pale and uncertain—only the tops of the 
yellow buildings take on their color. An 
old woman comes into the square. She 
has with her an immense umbrella fully 
eight feet in diameter. With the help of a 
small boy this is opened and tilted up upon 
the pavement. Under it she places a stool 
for herself and a little stove, where soon a 
charcoal fire is burning, over which she 
fries things that look like sausages, but 
are only some sort of yellow meal stuffed in 



A SPANISH GATE 
RONDA 




















EONDA, SPAIN 119 

skins. Life is moving more briskly now, 
though it is only half-past four, and work 
men in long blouses that reach to the knee 
stop and breakfast under the old woman’s 
umbrella. 

Leading a donkey burdened with a mass 
of grass-like stuff, a man in rags and tat¬ 
ters comes close to the hotel steps. On the 
pavement he spreads a rug, unpacks the 
donkey, and, sitting cross-legged, the man 
proceeds to weave the coarse grass baskets 
that will be of all shapes and sizes. 

Out from the square a street enticingly 
opens. Old men armed with great bundles 
of twigs are sweeping the pavement. 
Blackhaired maids are scrubbing the steps 
of the houses. Eugs are being shaken 
from upper windows. Bareheaded women 
wearing long, black-fringed shawls hurry 
along to market, a basket in one hand, a 
tiny fan in the other. Across the stupen¬ 
dous gorge on the wonderful arches of the 
most beautiful bridge in the world the high¬ 
way seeks the older, the Moorish town. 
Here the color scheme is richer, and the 
sun, now over the tops of the mountains, 
brings into sharp outline against the sky 
of infinite clearness the houses of green, 
and cream, and blue and white. Through 


120 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


open doors and along tiled passageways 
are had glimpses of inner courtyards set 
about with palms and roses, and cooled by 
the spray of fountains. Bits of Moorish 
work are here and there, and beautiful iron 
grills and strange quaint knockers. This 
is not the street called straight, and at al¬ 
most every turn the view is ended by the 
graceful yellow tower of a church, framed 
by the houses as in a picture. Leave out 
the occasional Moorish house fronts, and 
the street is but a duplicate of those in¬ 
tensely old-world byways of Havana, the 
most foreign thing in the western hemi¬ 
sphere. 

On the way back to the hotel you pass the 
market-house, a rather bare, pillared build¬ 
ing just over the bridge on the old side of 
the town. Within, it teems with life and 
color, but the color is not of the people, for 
a Ronda crowd is a somber-clad one, but of 
the fruit piled up in enormous heaps upon 
the floor. Red and green peppers mixed 
in great piles by the side of big white mel¬ 
ons ; yellow peaches, purple figs, white and 
blue grapes, and the beautiful rose and yel¬ 
low cactus fruit that is sold not only in the 
markets, but on all the street corners of 
southern Spain, and that ripens by the 


EONDA, SPAIN 121 

million on the cactus hedges that border the 
railroads. Exquisite as is its color, a love 
for its sweet insipid flavor is an acquired 
taste, as is also a liking for the greenish 
liquor sold everywhere, and made from the 
sweetened juice of unripe white grapes. 
Around the market-place boys are selling 
newspapers of the day before, and doing 
a thriving trade in lottery tickets which, I 
must confess, I had an unholy desire to 
buy. A few weeks before my visit, a boy 
of seventeen risked all he had, about a dol¬ 
lar of our money, on these tickets, and lost. 
It seemed so hopeless to the lad, such a 
desperate finality of ill-fortune, that the 
next dawn he climbed to the top of the rail¬ 
ing on the Moorish bridge, and plunged 
headlong to the rocks, six hundred feet be¬ 
low. Life is hard to these Spanish folk, 
and the folk seem hardened to the life 
about them. Among them there is an in¬ 
difference, a selfishness, a certain uncon¬ 
sciousness of human rights and human suf¬ 
fering, that amounts to cruelty. A cruelty 
that has written itself on page after page 
of Spanish history, and that actively as¬ 
serts itself to-day in the ghastly, blood¬ 
stained arena where men and bulls take 
each others’ lives to make a holiday for 


122 PICTURE TOAVNS OF EUROPE 


thousands; a cruelty that passively pre¬ 
sents itself in the indifference to the needs, 
to the very presence of a common hu¬ 
manity. 

This hideous national sport of theirs 
takes the place of baseball here, as the ab¬ 
sorbing national topic of interest. The 
periodical of widest circulation in Spain 
is wholly devoted to the subject, and the 
daily press discusses bull-fighting more 
thoroughly than national or international 
politics. A dead matador, killed in the 
arena, was being celebrated throughout 
Spain at the time of my visit, celebrated in 
song and story, and by a funeral that was 
a national event. His picture was every¬ 
where, in the shop windows, in the news¬ 
papers, in the magazines. 

Here at Ronda is the oldest arena in 
Spain, a relic of the rule of Rome. Out¬ 
side it is but a barren, whitewashed wall; 
within rise tier on tier of solid masonry, 
nearly all of Roman workmanship, sur¬ 
rounding an open oval space, and having a 
seating capacity great enough to accom¬ 
modate half the present population of the 
town. Great gates lead through a tunnel 
into the bull pen, and there is also an open¬ 
ing into the stalls where the horses are 



THE CATHEDRAL 
RONDA 
















EONDA, SPAIN 123 

kept. Above these is the room where once 
the gladiators and now the matadors 
gather, and opening from this the little room 
where are stored the saddles of beautiful 
workmanship, the long javelins with gay 
ribbons at the hilt that prod the bull to 
fury, and the short, wicked sword for the 
coup de grace. I was glad to come out 
from this room, so sickeningly suggestive, 
into the bright sunlight of the open arena, 
where some little children were playing at 
bull-fight. Not here, but in Madrid and Se¬ 
ville, the boy who played the bull had real 
horns strapped upon his forehead. Proud 
youngster! 

The only affection I saw evidenced in 
Spain by anybody for anybody or any¬ 
thing, was the affection everywhere be¬ 
stowed upon the donkey. These little 
creatures, often no bigger than a large 
dog, are made to carry heavy burdens, but 
in that and every other respect are treated 
like one of the family. Time and again 
you will see a group of peasants at 
luncheon under the shade of a tree, with 
the donkey, eased for the time of his bur¬ 
den, stretched out amongst them, thor¬ 
oughly at home. Here at Konda I passed 
a large house of the better class, its double 


124 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


doors thrown open, and within the tiled 
vestibule children and donkey at play, just 
as shown in the picture my camera caught. 

Toledo in the north and Ronda in the 
south are the most picturesque towns of 
Spain. Each crests the summit of a 
mighty rock, each boasts a bridge, famous 
as the town, but in spirit the two cities are 
utterly diverse. Toledo is dying amid a 
desert, Ronda lives in the midst of the 
garden of Spain. The strange, sad soul of 
Toledo is so manifest that the traveler 
averts his eyes from the profanation of a 
too great intimacy, but Ronda joyously in¬ 
vites you to share her life, and you as 
frankly can accept. 

Up from the edge of the valley the rock 
of Ronda lifts a sheer, precipitous front of 
six hundred feet or more. At the rear of 
the town it breaks downward to the plain 
in a fashion less abrupt, so that a wind¬ 
ing road can scale its yet steeply sloping 
sides. Centuries ago an earthquake took 
this great rocky plateau and shook it till 
it broke in two, there appearing across it a 
rent less than three hundred feet wide, but 
more than that in depth. Through this 
great fissure a river swirls tumultuously, 
its mist often climbing above the rocky 


HONDA, SPAIN 125 

walls, and just where the bridge is thrown 
across it leaps downward still another 
three hundred feet to the level of the plain. 
Here, on this strange rock, Rome built a 
city, and in after years the Moors threw 
up strong walls that helped to shelter the 
Moslem power in Spain till it fled finally 
forth from the Alhambra in the days of 
Ferdinand and Isabella. Surrendered to 
these joint sovereigns, they built upon the 
northern half of the rock ^ ‘ the new town ’ ’ 
which, with straight streets and low, uni¬ 
form houses, brings to the traveler a keen 
sense of disappointment. Here are the 
shops and the hotels, one of which, facing 
the little park, or Alameda, is one of the 
very best in Spain. 

After tribute to the beggar at its gates 
you walk through this quiet little garden 
and out upon an open, railed space where 
waits one of the most impressive, one of 
the most splendid views to be obtained 
from the walls of any town in Europe. To 
repeat a comparison made elsewhere, it is 
not so far-reaching as the vast view from 
the market-place of San Marino, nor so 
varied as the scene from the ramparts of 
Perugia, but for complete imiDressiveness 
it excels them both. Miles away are chalk- 


126 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


white mountains, naked, like those that 
loom along the Adriatic’s eastern shore, 
and all the miles between are covered with 
bare yellow fields, shadowed here and there 
by olive groves. Straight down, six hun¬ 
dred feet and more, the river skirts the 
cliff after its mad plunge through the cleft 
and its leap below the bridge. Just across 
to the left is the mighty rock, where sits 
the Moorish city in splendid confusion of 
walls and towers. 

As later I wandered hour after hour 
around this old Moorish town, it seemed to 
me the most picturesque place I had ever 
seen. Now that I have passed from under 
its spell, and the memories of Toledo and 
Clovelly and Ragusa and Carcassonne 
come back upon me, I hardly know whether 
to let that impression stand as an opinion 
or not. Perhaps it will be more accurate 
to say that while you are there Ronda 
seems the most picturesque town in the 
world—and what more can one ask of any 
place 1 The streets drop away so abruptly, 
giving such charming vistas of clinging 
towers and buildings; old gateways of such 
exceeding charm spring so unexpectedly 
across the way, and through them are of¬ 
fered such bits of nearby towers and 



DOORWAY 

RONDA 














EONDA, SPAIN 127 

distant landscape, that every moment is a 
keen delight. 

Then there is the cathedral square, 
where the old Mosque, remodeled, serves 
as a Christian church, presenting an archi¬ 
tecture fascinating in its strangeness. A 
beautiful square tower with doors that 
part way up open out upon a little balcony 
in the fashion of your room at the hotel, 
and a two-story veranda-like structure at 
the right of the tower, such is the yellow, 
plaster-walled, red-roofed cathedral that 
glows in the square at Eonda. Farther 
on you pass through another square of 
great picturesqueness, one side framed by 
low, adobe buildings of purely Spanish 
type, along another side a high yellow wall 
with a fountain in one corner, where 
women fill their water jars, and cattle come 
to drink, and, diagonally across, the 
crumbling gate and ruined court of the 
Moorish citadel. 

Thence you come upon a yellow, dusty 
road that turns its back upon the slender 
belfry of an ancient church and, by many a 
steep incline, seeks the level of the plain. 
Along this road comes and goes the travel 
forever passing between the country and 
the town, boys on donkeys with earthen 


128 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


wine bottles balanced across the saddle, 
women with water jars on their heads or 
carried on their hips, priests and peasants, 
in long and interesting procession. From 
the turn in the road by the church you look 
to the right across the valley to jagged 
peaks of mountains five thousand feet in 
height, to the right is the old medieval 
wall, and in front the city seems to tumble 
down the rocks, ending in the beautiful 
arch of a bridge and the low ruins of a 
castle belted by a row of pointed cypress 
trees. Close at hand in the valley are 
four or five threshing-floors, round places 
where the earth is packed hard, and here 
the farmers bring their corn, and here the 
‘‘ ox treadeth out the grain precisely as 
in Bible days and lands. The view is not 
only a wide one, but so intensely foreign 
in every detail that it lives in my memory 
as one of the typical scenes of Europe. 

But back in the old town on the hill there 
is many another interesting thing to see. 
There is an old, old house (whose name I 
have forgotten, and it really doesn’t mat¬ 
ter) that stands on the edge of the cliff. 
It is the most Moorish thing in Ronda. 
In the center is a courtyard open to the 
sky, with an interesting stairway leading 


RONDA, SPAIN 129 

to the floor above, and in the midst a well, 
the ice-cold water from which you are priv¬ 
ileged to drink, thereby gaining some 
magic properties which I likewise have 
forgotten, though I drank deeply, and 
twice. But the wonder of the house is the 
overwhelming view from the balcony, 
hanging directly above the valley six hun¬ 
dred feet below; valley, mountains, olive 
groves, villages, and rocks blending in one 
tremendous yellow picture. 

Straight beneath the balcony rise two of 
the most curious rocks imaginable. Per¬ 
fectly cone-shaped, and apparently about 
three hundred feet high, they are very 
singular formations. My guide said he 
had never been to them, it was too far; no 
photographs of them were obtainable in 
the shops, and the proprietor of the hotel 
had never so much as heard of them. But 
there they are, like great chimneys, just 
under that part of Ronda’s cliff on which 
the Moorish house is standing. I intended 
to find them the next day, but something 
happened, so now I shall have to go back. 

But the wildest, strangest thing in 
Ronda is the bottom of the great gorge, 
and the way there. You find the latter 
through the doorway of a private house. 


130 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


Narrow steps are cut in a black cellar-like 
way that plunges down through the rock, 
comes out upon a cave-like opening half¬ 
way down the clitf, and then dizzily fin¬ 
ishes the descent by means of iron stairs 
that hang like a fire-escape above the rush¬ 
ing stream. Twilight reigns at the bottom 
of this tremendous crevice, only some two 
hundred feet across, whose giant, precipi¬ 
tous walls seem to almost come together as 
you look upward three hundred feet to 
their summits. Around a labyrinth of 
mighty rocks the river rages, sending up 
clouds of mist that at times obscure the 
granite walls. At one place, however, a 
bit of quiet water appears, and here black- 
hooded women are doing the family wash¬ 
ing under the shadow of the ruined arch 
of a Roman bridge. If you do not mind 
getting your feet wet as you slip from 
the stones, you can follow the stream a 
considerable distance in this uncanny 
place, getting strange, shivery pictures at 
every turn. 

Such is Ronda, odd, picturesque and 
beautiful, a town ditferent from all others, 
and one whose lure will surely draw me 
back once my feet are again on Spanish 
soil. 



THE OLD BRIDGE 
RONDA 







I AM not the discoverer of the fact that 
towns present as distinct a personality as 
do people, but the fact that they do has im¬ 
pressed me as one of the most interesting 
things in travel. You meet towns pre¬ 
cisely as you meet people, and look for¬ 
ward to the meeting in the same way. 
Some places, such as most of the provincial 
towns of France, are utterly commonplace 
and come to bore one in just the same way 
as does the prolonged presence of unin¬ 
teresting people. Some towns are homely, 
but companionable; some pique the curi¬ 
osity by a certain intangible, vague sense 
of mystery; some allure by their beauty; 
others attract by their strangeness, just as 
does some person who is singled out from 
your acquaintances because of a strange¬ 
ness in his ways or words or lines of 
thought which interest because they bring 
to you something new or different. 

Thus have I come in many journeys to 
give the places I visit the human at¬ 
tributes; to visualize them in my memory 
as personalities, just as with the people I 

131 


132 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


have met. In meeting a stranger the 
thought is always uppermost, Will he 
prove interesting? ’’ And so one leaves 
the hotel for the first time in a strange city 
with keen and lively interest, not for mu¬ 
seums and churches, but for finding the 
soul of the place that he may know what 
manner of town it is. And this soul, this 
personality, is not made up wholly of the 
architecture, nor of the crowds on the 
street, nor of the beauty or otherwise of 
the situation, nor of the memory of the 
things that have happened there, but of all 
these things which fuse into an intangible 
yet appreciable something which, for want 
of a better name, may be called the per¬ 
sonality of the place. 

This personality is always a subtle 
thing. Sometimes it is hard to grasp, and 
sometimes it eludes you altogether, and 
then, though you know the streets by name, 
and can follow the byways at night, yet you 
cannot be said to know the town. 

But Bruges is an easy city to get ac¬ 
quainted with. Its personality is not com¬ 
plex, awakening many and different emo¬ 
tions. It expresses itself simply and 
frankly. It is like a beautiful person who 
is now old and withdrawn from the activ- 


BEUGES, BELGIUM 133 

ities of life, though still full of kindly 
interest in the world about him—a ruddy¬ 
faced old man, who wears a ready smile, 
and is full of wisdom and peace, whose 
presence is a benediction; for at Bruges 
you are happy and at rest. 

A writer cannot hope to make his read¬ 
ers see the precise things that go to create 
this Bruges. He can define the personal¬ 
ity, but he cannot describe all the elements 
that enter into it in such a way that he 
who reads will fully understand the why 
and wherefore. But admitting the effort 
is foredoomed to failure, still will I en¬ 
deavor it, for Old Man Bruges is so lovable 
that everyone should know him. 

First of all, there is the ever-present 
sense of the historical past. It is a haunt¬ 
ing, following memory that is continually 
with you. There are few towns where a 
knowledge of the past is so necessary to an 
apprehension of the soul of the present. 
You cannot realize why the old man sits in 
the sun, content, unless you know the great 
things he did, the great part he played, 
back in the years of his prime. 

Bruges was born on an unknown day, and 
through all the dread, gray centuries, after 
the fall of Home had unloosed anarchy 


134 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


upon the earth, lay upon the river hank, a 
few huts huddled round a ruined castle 
shadowed by a square church tower. 
Thither, in the middle of the eight hun¬ 
dreds, came that wild, tierce product of 
those rude times, Baldwin, first Count of 
Flanders, and thither with him came his 
wife, Judith, stepmother of England’s 
Alfred the Great, a woman kin to his own 
wild nature, a fit pair to build a State in 
those troubled days when iron will and 
reckless courage and a master mind were 
prime essentials for the work. Theirs was 
a definite ambition—to make a nation, and 
for its capital they converted Bruges into 
a walled city with four lofty gates. 

For years, the fierce Norse pirates con¬ 
tinued to sweep the channel seas; for years 
flame and war and death ravaged the main¬ 
land, but through it all Bruges sat in 
safety within its gates, and grew in wealth 
and numbers. From all over Europe 
merchants came, for a river led down to 
the sea, and Bruges was a central point for 
trade with England and all the coasts of 
France. 

But while the city thus advanced, there 
was no corresponding increase in the co¬ 
hesive spirit of nationality among the 



A CITY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY 

BRUGES 



















BEUGES, BELGIUM 135 

dwellers in the surrounding provinces, all 
of which were nominally subject to the 
Counts of Flanders. These provinces had 
been settled by Saxons impelled to migra¬ 
tion at about the same time, and by the 
same forces that led our own Saxon an¬ 
cestors to follow the leadership of Hengist 
and Horsa in their invasion of England. 
Back in their forest Saxon home these men 
had lived a life of great personal liberty. 
No feudal system bound them to the 
central authority of a king, as it did in 
France. The family, or, at most, its tribal 
outgrowth, was the source of power and 
object of allegiance, and as in Saxon Eng¬ 
land, so in Saxon Flanders, the people re¬ 
sented any serious attempt at government 
by any other authority than they them¬ 
selves had created. This attitude of the 
Karls, as the Saxons in Flanders were 
called, was long respected by the Counts of 
Bruges. But after two centuries an un¬ 
wise woman, then Countess, determined to 
centralize further the power of the State, 
an attempt that led to civil war, and, in the 
end, to a confirmation of the freedom of 
the Karls. But out of this came centuries 
of trouble and many deeds of blood, and 
the growth of rival factions that tore the 


136 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


State even as were rent the cities of Italy 
during the ages that because of such deeds 
men call the Dark. 

There is no history more intense, more 
vivid and romantic than the history of 
Bruges, and the temjDtation is great to fill 
this chapter with the wild story of its days, 
and it is regretfully that there is given in¬ 
stead a bare epitome of results. Class 
warred with class, the country with the 
city, one city with another. Rulers were 
murdered or expelled. Foreign armies 
thundered at the gates. Time and again 
the streets were choked with dead, and the 
canals reddened with human blood. Lib¬ 
erty had its martyrs and tyranny its vic¬ 
tims. But all the while the successes of 
its merchants grew apace; the city’s wealth 
increased; art flourished; commerce car¬ 
ried the name of Bruges throughout the 
world; and steadily but slowly liberty 
made headway and wrote itself, though 
only a sentence at a time, into the charters 
of Flemish cities, liberty that to this day 
remains in charters that still are law. 

In time Bruges rivaled Venice as the 
world’s chief mart of trade, and there 
arose an architecture unique, beautiful; 
churches, public buildings, streets of 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 137 

gabled dwellings, all colored in soft, dull 
reds and cream, architecture that yet re¬ 
mains, and that has caused the town to be 
everywhere known as Bruges the Beau¬ 
tiful. 

But how could this material prosperity 
coincide with the misery-making condi¬ 
tions of war and discord! And now in an 
apparently secure age Bruges has again 
looked upon war and violence, yet it is still 
Bruges, still the old citadel of impregnable 
charm. The people who inhabit it are still, 
in some astonishing way, prosperous and 
happy considering life as a timeless, flow¬ 
ing thing bringing blessing or torture. 

But they must have taken life as it came, 
and made the most of days of grace. Be¬ 
sides, fighting and revolt and liberty and 
government were, after all, not the concern 
of the many, but of the few, and undis¬ 
turbed, except when death found them, the 
masses lived on in their own little circle 
of affairs, and loved and hated and gos¬ 
siped and endured, and blindly helped in 
building great cathedrals and stately 
towers, and, because they knew nothing 
different, I think, little realized how mis¬ 
erable they were. 

In Bruges liberty and commercialism 


138 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

were one and inseparable. The various 
trades were early organized into Guilds, 
acquiring certain privileges of local self- 
government by their charters from the 
State. The preservation of these char¬ 
tered rights was essential for the develop¬ 
ment of their commerce, so that, when 
threatened by tyranny at home, or by in¬ 
vasion from abroad, these Guilds, com¬ 
manding the wealth and intelligence of the 
city, were quick to assert themselves. If 
cynical, we might say that, after all, it 
wasn’t patriotism, but selfishness, that 
made them patriotic. But the result was 
the same—they served liberty, and served 
the State. In 1302, when the Battle of the 
Golden Spurs defeated the united attack of 
half of Europe upon Flemish freedom, it 
was the bravery of the Guilds of Bruges 
that decided the issue—Guilds that 
charged with silken banners flying, crying, 
<< For Flanders and the Lion.” 

Thus through the years Bruges lived its 
part well and did great things for liberty, 
and fought many brave fights, and became 
prosperous and exceeding beautiful. But 
late in the fourteen hundreds trouble came. 
Its route to the sea filled up with sand, its 
trade lessened, the tribute levied by the 




THE BELFRY 
BRUGES 

















BRUGES, BELGIUM 139 

conquering Maximilian absorbed its 
wealth. Then came Alva and his terrible 
Spaniards, and after that came exhaustion 
that many mistook for death, for even yet 
people speak of Bruges the Dead. But 
Bruges is not dead, but merely old, sitting 
in the sun in the serene contemplation of 
a long, full life. 

But what is Bruges like to-day? What 
do you see, and whom do you see ? 

First of all, when coming up from Brus¬ 
sels or down from Ostend, you look from 
the railroad train and see two towers far 
lifted among some lesser ones, then by that 
token will you know that Bruges is near. 
These are the beautiful tower of St. Sal¬ 
vator and the famous belfry, sung by Long¬ 
fellow and lesser poets by the score. 

At the moment I do not recall a single 
street from the station in any city that is 
not a disappointment, and Bruges fur¬ 
nishes no exception to the rule. But here 
the commonplace thoroughfare is redeemed 
by the glory of its end, for it leads straight 
into the heart of Bruges, into the heart of 
the past, into the great square, where rises 
the strange and lovely belfry with the 
great so-called lantern round the top, over 
against which stand many ancient houses, 


140 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


fair examples of the art that made Bruges 
famous. 

The shops that line the way are uninter¬ 
esting, though most of the windows are 
filled with the lace for the making of which 
the town has long been noted, and there is 
a good deal of the brass and copper ware 
which is better and cheaper in Belgium and 
Holland than anywhere else in Europe. 
The dress of the people is for the most 
part cosmopolitan, such as you would see 
anywhere on the continent, or even in 
America. Occasionally, however, there is 
a distinctly foreign note. Here and there 
you pass a woman with a long, black cloak 
that falls to her feet, and is attached to 
and forms part of a large, black bonnet 
projecting over the face, somewhat in the 
manner of the cloaks worn by the bare¬ 
footed native women of the Azores. Black- 
robed priests with black shovel hats hurry 
back and forth. Peasant women in short, 
full black skirts, with close-fitting white 
caps on their heads, follow carts drawn 
by two or three large dogs in harness. 
Little boys in suits of rusty black play at 
leapfrog, and other boys sedately come 
from school dressed in black, short, tight 
trousers and half-hose, a short black coat, 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 141 

a broad Eton collar, and a derby hat. 
Among the well-to-do, boys dress thus till 
eighteen or nineteen years of age, a cus¬ 
tom common to much of Europe. 

These Belgians are fond of black; no¬ 
where else have I seen such a profusion of 
crape. Frequently one will meet a woman 
decked in intensest mourning, her heavy 
crape veil falling entirely to her feet, not 
only in front, but in the back as well, so 
that she is completely swathed in it. A 
Belgian crowd is a somber one, but the ex¬ 
quisite color of Bruges, the soft creams 
and reds of the bricks that are exclusively 
used in the buildings, the green of the 
trees, and the opal shimmer of the water in 
the canals form a relieving background. 

Away from the bustle of the main streets 
peacefulness is the dominant note. You 
sense this the moment you come out on the 
great square. True, a tramway runs along 
the side, and from the fronts of cafes, 
tables and chairs spread out upon the 
pavement, and in one corner is a very 
dreadful moving picture show, where a 
maddening bell clamors hideously during 
the early evening, but in spite of all this, 
the presence of the towering belfry fills the 
place like a benediction, and the ancient 


142 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 


buildings standing there convey to my 
mind in some mysterious way the fantastic 
notion that they are alive, and they seem so 
solemn and so beautiful that the square 
falls silent—you do not hear the tram, and 
the wicked bell, nor the children at their 
play. 

If you would see Bruges, do not drive. 
Bruges is an entity, it grows upon you 
slowly, you must take it deliberately. 
First of all, take a boat and make the 
round of its waterways, watch the spires 
reflected in the willow-swept surface; note 
the play of color as the steeply gabled 
fronts of Sixteenth-Century houses are 
mirrored back; see how the graceful bows 
of the low bridges arch above you. With 
ever recurring view of picturesquely 
grouped tower and gable and bridge you 
will glide by tree-shaded banks and come 
finally to the Beguinage, a wonderful park¬ 
like place, filled with great trees and of 
infinite stillness and charm. Here come 
and go sweet-faced sisters, and here 
artists are always working. 

These Beguinages are, I believe, peculiar 
to Belgium and Holland, at least they are 
far more numerous in these countries than 
elsewhere. George Wharton Edwards, in 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 143 

liis book, Some Old Flemish Towns, thus 
refers to them with special reference to 
the noted one at Bruges: 

These communities consist of spin¬ 
sters or often widows, who take none or 
few of the oaths binding them to the 
church, and, save for their own conscience, 
may return at any time to their homes. 
They are said to pay a stated sum of 
money into the funds of the order upon 
entering, and after a period of probation 
along with the novices, they are assigned 
to the small houses within the walls, where 
each Beguine occupies private apartments 
with her own grated door in the wall, 
whereon her church name is emblazoned, 
for she takes a new name upon entering 
the order. Their days are spent in mak¬ 
ing lace, educating poor children and car¬ 
ing for the sick and needy. The order 
is under the care of a Mother Superior ap¬ 
pointed by the Bishop. The oldest 
Beguinage is in Bruges, founded in the 
Thirteenth Century. Here, on a lovely 
sheet of water, mirroring the gables and 
the soft, velvety greenness of the trees, is 
one of the most delightful spots in the 
country. ’ ’ 

From a little lake dominated by a tower 


144 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


that has stood at guard six hundred years 
or more, the waterway flows beside the an¬ 
cient ramparts of the city, where smooth 
walks lead under great trees, and flowers 
color the sod, and so you will go on and 
on into new beauties, ever glad you are at 
Bruges. 

There are few more fascinating spots in 
any city than the quiet, tree-shaded square 
of the Place Bourg, with the bells chiming 
from the nearby belfry tower, and the 
afternoon light falling upon the quaint and 
gorgeously gilded front of the Law Courts 
with its arched opening, a northern 
Bridge of Sighs, someone has called it, 
whence leads a narrow passage to the 
street beyond. Adjoining this is the ir¬ 
regular fagade of the town hall, set about 
with ancient statues, and at right angles 
is the curious little chapel of the Sacred 
Blood, the lower story of which is near a 
thousand years old. The place is very 
still for the heart of a city, and seldom are 
buildings so old, so historic and so beau¬ 
tiful found in so choice a setting, where 
one can sit at ease and watch them. 

Every street that radiates from this 
charmed spot is lined with stepped gable 
houses, centuries old, all of soft-hued brick, 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 145 

but the walk of greatest fascination will 
lead you under the '' Bridge of Sighs,’' 
and over a canal where swans glide, and 
into another square where stands the pil¬ 
lared fish-market, and where, across the 
water, the irregular pile of the Law Courts 
makes a picture that artists love to paint. 

Then you go along the ever-charming 
Quai Vert by water crossed by the fre¬ 
quent arch of bridges, and where, at every 
corner, an artist and his easel stand, on to 
the right and down the poorer, but none 
the less picturesque, quarters where the 
lace-makers sit at work in the street, their 
shuttles flying back and forth with in¬ 
credible rapidity. 

This making of lace is the one great in¬ 
dustry of Bruges, and gives thousands of 
women employment, not in factories, but in 
their homes. The wages paid are ab¬ 
surdly small, but the houses they support 
are far neater than are maintained in the 
poorer quarters of an American city. 
Flowers and curtains are at the windows, 
and women and children look happier and 
more satisfied than do so many of our own 
manual workers. They gather in groups 
and laugh and gossip at their work. There 
is always more laughter and more appar- 


146 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUEOPE 


ent happiness in all Europe, save Por¬ 
tugal, than in America, and, frankly, I 
sometimes wonder, when contrasting the 
contented-looking Bavarian countrymen 
with some of the sharp-featured farmers of 
our plains, or the smiling Italian loafer 
with our sullen longshoreman, or these 
lace-makers of Bruges with some of our 
caresmitten factory girls — I wonder 
wherein the emigrant finds the gain. 

There are few cities whose churches and 
galleries are so rich in beautiful and un¬ 
usual works of art, and while I believe that 
in most to^vns the streets and squares form 
the truest and most interesting gallery and 
museum, yet the traveler will lose much if 
he fails to find some of these wonderful 
painted pictures that hang on the wmlls of 
Bruges. 

This is particularly true of the unique 
work of Memling, an artist that to a lay¬ 
man's eye possesses such subtlety of color 
and of form, and such extraordinary deft¬ 
ness of execution as to characterize him as 
definitely as does the work of Eembrandt 
or Murillo proclaim those artists. In the 
Hospital of St. John these pictures of his 
are gathered. Most remarkable of all is 
The Shrine of St. Ursula. Of such amaz- 



A LACEMAKER AT WORK 
BRUGES 
























BRUGES, BELGIUM 147 

ing fineness, of such delicate and miniature¬ 
like texture are the paintings that cover its 
sides, that even a magnifying-glass, always 
used in its examination, fails to reveal the 
brush strokes. The painting itself must 
have been done by the help of a glass, as a 
tear upon the cheek of one of the figures is 
almost invisible until magnified, when it as¬ 
sumes a perfect globular form. I am not 
deciding whether this is art, but I do know 
that it is interesting, and that it is beau¬ 
tiful in a way that is all its own. 

Of all the romances, and there are many, 
that fill the pages of the history of Bruges, 
the story of Baldwin of Constantinople is 
the most dramatic. At the close of the 
eleven hundreds, Baldwin, last of the race 
of the city^s founders, ruled in Flanders. 
After ruling well, judged by the standards 
of those wild old days, he took the cross, 
with many of his knights, and set forth 
upon the crusade that, with the dawn of the 
Thirteenth Century, sent the armed hosts 
of Europe to capture Jerusalem from the 
Infidel. The story of that crusade is a 
romance of itself. The mighty walls of 
Zara, a Christian city on the Adriatic’s 
shore, were leveled by this Christian host 
at bequest of the Doge of Venice, and then 


148 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


sweeping to the south the vast fleet of the 
crusaders besieged Constantinople, and 
Constantinople fell, and Baldwin became 
the Emperor of the East. For a year he 
wore the purple, and from the throne of 
Constantine ruled with the pomp and 
splendor of an Oriental fairy tale. Then 
came revolt and battle, and silently, mys¬ 
teriously the Emperor disappeared from 
the sight and knowledge of the world. One 
moment he was seen fighting like a lion be¬ 
fore the walls of Adrianople, the next in¬ 
stant he was gone. He was not among the 
slain; he had vanished. And back in 
Bruges his daughter, Jeanne, reigned in 
his stead. The years went on, and the peo¬ 
ple hated Jeanne, and wandering minstrels 
sang songs of the ruler of Bruges who for 
a year had been an Emperor of strange 
peoples and of distant lands. Twenty 
years had come and gone, and then a rumor 
spread out among the peasants and came 
to be whispered in the market-place, and 
discussed even in the circles of the Court. 
In a cave, deep in the forest, was dwelling 
an ancient man, a hermit, but there were 
those who had looked upon the face of 
Baldwin on that far day when, in the great 
cathedral of Bruges, he took the vow of the 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 149 

crusader, and who had glimpsed this un¬ 
known hermit, and they said- And se¬ 

cretly, in twos and threes, others rode out 
to see, and the story grew and would not 
down, and one day they brought the her¬ 
mit forth, and all Flanders rose to him 
even as one man, and the cities threw wide 
their gates, and he entered Bruges, clad 
again in his imperial purple, with the 
crown of empire on his head, and the peo¬ 
ple wept for joy. But his daughter denied 
him, and fled to France. Then Baldwin 
told his tale. He had been wounded in the 
battle and taken prisoner. A barbarian 
maiden nursed him back to life and loved 
the man she saved. Fertile in resource, 
she planned escape together, and they fled. 
But the Emperor refused to keep his vow 
to marry her. It wmuld be wicked to 
marry a pagan woman; so he killed her, 
and struggled on to reach his home. Again 
captured, he was sold into slavery, and for 
years endured just punishment for his sin 
—an Emperor harnessed to a plow with an 
ox for a fellow. But finally he again 
escaped, and, as is usually the case, con¬ 
science strengthened as the body failed, so 
he sought a cave and a hermit ^s life. How¬ 
ever, vox populi vox Dei, and if the people 



150 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


really insisted, why—and Baldwin reigned 
again in Bruges as Count of Flanders. 

Now the King of France was crafty, and 
having espoused the cause of Baldwin's 
daughter, he sent safe escort to my great 
and good friend, Baldwin, Emperor of Con¬ 
stantinople and Count of Flanders,’^ and 
an invitation to visit the French court. 
This invitation the Count accepted, and 
with a gleaming retinue of knights, and 
clad all in purple and gold, came to the 
King of France, who met him with great 
ceremony and a lying tongue. But Bald¬ 
win was a wise old man, and even that 
night he let himself down from his win¬ 
dow and fled in the darkness, and paused 
not by night or day till the Flemish 
frontier was crossed. Then the King of 
France sent his people through the Flem¬ 
ish towns, and this man they bought, and 
this one they deceived, and presently trea¬ 
son was rife, and the old man’s courage 
failed and he fled before the coming of his 
daughter’s soldiers, but she caught him 
and she ‘‘ hanged him in chains on a gib¬ 
bet at Lille between two hounds.” 

But was it her father Jeanne hanged, or 
did he die before the walls of Adrianople, 
and was the hermit of the cave an arrant 


BRUGES, BELGIUM 


151 


impostor? Those who could answer this 
question have been dead seven hundred 
years. 

Now, if you like this story, there is writ¬ 
ten many another true romance of Bruges; 
there is the tale of the Battle of the Golden 
Spurs, and the Story of Charles the Ter¬ 
rible, and of the Last Mass of Charles the 
Good, and of How Proud Bertulph was 
Crucified in the Market-Place, and of How 
the Vial of Precious Blood was Lost and 
Found Again, and The Love Story of 
Bourchard d^Avesnes, and when you have 
read these and many more, Bruges will 
seem no mere town of brick and stone, but 
as are long days of tales told by the Old 
Man who sits now in the sun and talks of 
the things that he saw in his youth, and 
tries to forget the all too recent tread of 
alien and invading hosts passing under his 
majestic belfry. 



HOLLAND 


Taken as a whole, I enjoy Holland the 
least of any country in Europe. For one 
thing, I have found it always colder than 
I like, for eighty-five degrees in the shade 
spells comfort for me, and when there in 
June and again in July of ditferent years, 
I have shivered in cold pale sunshine, 
avoiding the blue shadows where the mer¬ 
cury crouched in the sixties. Again, the 
crude, raw color so continually and often 
so inappropriately applied by the Dutch is 
a perpetual offense. It is irritating to see 
a bright-blue tree trunk surrounded by the 
ever present red geranium, which must be 
the national flower of Holland, if there be 
one. After two days one prays that he 
may be delivered from the sight of red 
geraniums forever and forever. 

And again, Holland is the only country 
where the people are, in places, distinctly 
rude. In no other land in Europe have I 
seen a dozen boys and young women follow 
an American girl with hoots and jeers, and 
this happened in Holland because her hat 
did not conform to their own peculiar 

152 



MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND 153 

fashion of head-dress. Of course, this as¬ 
sertive lack of manners is not to be found 
in Amsterdam or The Hague, but then, who 
wants to go to Amsterdam or The Hague 
if in search of the real, the picturesque 
Holland! And most emphatically and 
most fortunately the criticism cannot be 
applied to Middelburg, most charming of 
towns in all the land of dikes. It is gener¬ 
ally a difficult thing to select the one town 
of a country that is the most interesting, 
the most characteristic, the most pic¬ 
turesque. But this difficulty does not 
confront one in dealing with Holland. 
Middelburg is so preeminently the ideal 
city that there is no room for hesitation. 
Mrs. Waller, in her bright, gossipy book. 
Through the Gates of the Netherlands, 
says of Middelburg: There is an in¬ 

describable charm about this island city. 
It lays hold upon you in numberless ways, 
until you say, and with truth, ‘ there is 
none such, ’ and give to it your entire Dutch 
allegiance and your true American affec¬ 
tion.’^ And Lucas, the English writer, 
places Middelburg first among the cities of 
Holland for power to charm the visitor. It 
is a place that is different, and it is not on 
the beaten track, and as inducements to go 


154 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 

there, what can be more compelling than 
these? 

Middelburg is the capital of Zeeland, the 
southwesternmost province of Holland, 
and lies only four miles from Flushing in 
the same green level country and by the 
same ribbon-like canals characteristic of 
the Netherlands. Overhead is the same 
cold color in the pale sky, and the same 
drive of white cloud, that typify the Dutch 
skies everywhere. The town is belted by 
a broad waterway that completely en¬ 
circles it, and that served in the fighting- 
days of old, as a moat to the star-pointed 
walls whose place is now filled with park¬ 
like walks shaded with great trees. Across 
the still, dark water the gabled houses of 
soft pinks and creams present a picture 
full of a quiet and pleasant beauty. From 
out the red roofs and the green masses of 
the trees rise two great towers, that of the 
Town Hall, a hundred and eighty feet high, 
and the spire of the Nieuwe Kirk, a hun¬ 
dred feet higher. 

Before exploring the city itself it is like 
tasting a new book by opening its pages 
here and there, to walk around the town on 
the shaded paths by the encircling canal, 
resting now and then on the benches under 



THE APPROACH TO 


















-A* 



MIDDELBUEG, HOLLAND 155 

the trees. It is there will best come 
to you the perception of Middelburg’s al¬ 
luring beauty, and the difference of that 
beauty from that of other towns. You 
cannot hurry, for the sense of an abiding 
calm grows upon you, and you linger to 
look at the swans sail under a rustic bridge 
and across the reflection of a long-armed 
windmill. You watch the quaintly-clad 
people come and go, and presently you 
will fall to thinking of the history of the 
town that waits across the moat. 

Under the shadow of the great tower of 
the Nieuwe Kirk lies the Abbey, where, 
four hundred years ago, gathered the 
Kmights of the Golden Fleece in a gleam¬ 
ing pageant more splendid than Holland 
ever saw before. The Abbey itself was 
founded in the eleven hundreds, and 
though injured by fire, still is a place 
of serene old age. Almost as old is 
the municipality itself, chartered in the 
year 1253, the document still carefully kept 
in the town-house archives. Where we 
now sit and look across the velvet shadows 
of the moat, back in the days of the bloody 
struggle with Spain, camped a besieging 
army of the Dutch. For the Spanish held 
the town a long time, and endured the hor- 


156 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


rors of siege and famine and death just as 
bravely as the Dutch endured in other 
towns when compassed by the troops of 
Alva. But that was long ago, and since 
those evil days the history of Middelburg 
has been the commonplace of peace and 
prosperity and the content that comes with 
both, for a more contented-looking people 
than the twenty thousand Zeelanders who 
live here now cannot be found in Europe. 

Before you cross the bridge and enter 
on the town, you are sure to find, if you are 
a good explorer, a most delightful road 
that entices you along the way to Veere. 
It is paved and shaded, and here come 
and go the queer, boat-like wagons of the 
neighboring farmers, wagons with high, 
bright blue wheels, and green box-like 
bodies, and white, rounded, canvas tops, 
from under which peer faces quaintly 
framed. The strong brown-faced farmer 
with bobbed hair and gold earrings, and 
a queer little round cap, the wife with stiff 
white cap and gold ornaments a-dangle 
down her forehead, and the youngsters 
just like father or mother, as the case 
may be. 

It was on this road that I saw a round- 
faced maid in wooden shoes bring forth a 


MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND 157 

kettle of boiling water and, dropping on 
her knees, proceed to scrub the middle of 
the paved street. And as for the side¬ 
walks in the town itself, they are kept in 
such a state of immaculate cleanliness that 
to walk upon them is not to be thought of, 
each property owner extending an iron 
fence from his side line straight across the 
walk, so that the passerby takes, perforce, 
to the middle of the road. 

But how wonderfully charming, none the 
less, are these Middelburg streets! There 
is such softness of color in the old brick 
fronts; such quaintness of outline in the 
high, steep gables; such surprising effect 
in the tight board shutters painted in hour¬ 
glass designs in red and black, and black 
and white, and green and yellow, and many 
another combination. And it is all so old. 
Judging from the dates, everything seems 
to have been built in the Sixteenth Cen¬ 
tury. Some of the houses have checker¬ 
board fronts, where colored bricks are 
made into intricate design. The old mint 
has a very interesting fagade, and bears 
the inscriptions, ‘‘ Serving Gold is 
Wrong and Money is the Sinews of 
War.^^ This trick of placing significant 
mottoes on their buildings is typically 


158 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

Dutch, and many private residences are 
adorned with legends such as “ This is my 
pleasure and my life,’’ The place for 
song,” and the like. For public buildings 
and old town gates, the Scriptures are so 
freely drawn on that one writer remarks 
that, should the Bible be otherwise lost 
to man, it could be replaced almost intact 
from the inscriptions on Dutch walls. 

As you go along these quaint ways, you 
come unexpectedly upon beautiful bits of 
park and quiet squares, and finally into the 
Market-Place itself, all one side of which is 
filled by the Town Hall. I have seen fa¬ 
mous town-houses in every country of 
Europe, but never have I seen one that ap¬ 
peared to me as beautiful as this Town 
Hall of Middelburg. After an absence of 
two years I went to Holland just to look 
upon it again, and my first impression 
was confirmed, and I am ready to pro¬ 
claim it as among the most noteworthy 
buildings in Europe. It is an irregular. 
Gothic pile, its front a lacework of stone 
set about with statues, and a three-story 
roof from which look out twenty-four 
fascinating little dormer windows with red 
and white shutters. Back of this high 
slope of roof rises the beautiful tower dom- 



THE TOWN HALL 
MIDDELBURG 













MIDDELBURa, HOLLAND 159 

inating the city. When in this market 
square of Middelburg, I always feel as if 
in a theater where the curtain had just 
rung up and I was watching the stage ex¬ 
pectantly ' for the appearance of the 
players. This is when the square is 
empty, as it often is. But when, on 
market days, long lines of booths form lit¬ 
tle streets down the center, each booth pre¬ 
sided over by some figure out of an opera, 
and other figures, fully dressed for the 
stage, go hurrying back and forth in the 
shadow of that strange Town Hall, then I 
listen for the first note of the orchestra 
and the opening line of the chorus. The 
outlines of the Town Hall are too pic¬ 
turesque to be real, they are such as a 
scene painter would have produced as a 
background for these oddly garbed figures 
clattering by in their wooden shoes. Lit¬ 
tle streets of respectable red brick houses 
open into the perspective so exactly as 
they do into the flies, and here and there 
quaint gable fronts come into view with the 
same irrelevancy and unexpectedness as 
sometimes they do upon the painted 
scenery, that it is hard to realize that it is 
real life being played out before you. And 
not only the costumes, but the people them- 


160 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


selves, seem wholly make-believe. Take 
that milkmaid with her tight-fitting white 
cap and little corkscrews of gold bobbing 
by her ears, a low-necked black waist that 
fits like a jersey, the short tight sleeves 
ending above the elbow, her immensely full 
black skirt, her wooden shoes, and, ad¬ 
justed to her shoulders, that bright-blue 
wooden yoke with shining brass pails bal¬ 
ancing on either side; watch her quick, 
business-like walk; nobody ever saw such 
a milkmaid bustle in and out again in that 
fashion except upon the stage. And that 
boy of twelve, with thick bobbed hair and 
gold earrings and little round black cap, 
and short, tight jacket, and enormously 
full long trousers, who stands just at the 
right spot smoking a huge cigar—he was 
certainly placed by the stage manager, and 
you wonder what he looks like in private 
life. And the dear, demure little maids 
from school, who come up the painted 
streets and take their appointed places. 
And that strikingly made-up fisherman. 
This is what you see in the Market Square 
at Middelburg. 

And along the unreal streets the cos¬ 
tumes are found as well. Of course, the 
quaint Dutch dress is worn less and less 


MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND, 161 

by the people of the town, but, none the 
less, in Middelburg and the province of 
which it is the capital, it still prevails more 
generally than anywhere else in the coun¬ 
try, save in the Island of Maarken. The 
bicycle is everywhere, and in combination 
with these costumes is sometimes startling. 
For instance, I saw an old lady calmly 
pedaling along in full Dutch dress, save 
that on top of her little white cap was 
perched a widow’s bonnet from which there 
streamed out behind a long black crape 
veil; and a tall fat man in tight little 
roundabout, and pantaloons of enormous 
dimensions, with bobbed hair and a silk 
hat, will ever abide as a pleasant memory. 

Middelburg is round like a wheel, with 
the market-place for the hub, and if you 
are forgetful of this fact, you are liable 
to go around and around and never get 
anywhere, in the circling streets. As you 
keep on, however, you pass by hundreds 
of old Dutch houses, some modern shops, 
and here and there a church whose outside 
looks inviting. But never go into a church 
in Holland if you would escape disappoint¬ 
ment, for, no matter how splendid the ex¬ 
terior, the interior is inevitably spoiled by 
being drenched in whitewash, the painful 


162 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


effect being further intensified by great 
windows of plain glass, making the interior 
light and cold and barren. 

I suppose Puritanism was good for the 
world, and an essential element in making 
straight the road for the development of 
modern thought and modern life, but it has 
much to answer for, after all, in robbing 
life of joy and religion of beauty. It was 
an excess just as savage as the things that 
went before, illustrative of the truth that 
has been eternal, that every great move¬ 
ment is never an unmixed blessing nor an 
unmixed sin. There is much to justify a 
faith that expressed itself in solemn and 
stately ritual, and made the road to heaven 
that opened through its great cathedrals a 
beautiful one to tread. And there is much 
that has to be forgiven in a creed that as¬ 
serted itself in whitewash and a dull, drab 
life. 

Speaking of churches, I never saw a con¬ 
tinental town that so proclaimed its Sun¬ 
day up to six p.M. All day there is a per¬ 
vading atmosphere of serious quiet. All 
the shops are closed and shutters and cur¬ 
tains drawn aggravatingly over the inter¬ 
esting windows. Everyone goes to church, 
and after service apparently sits at home. 



youthful housewifery 

MIDDELEURG 











MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND 163 

as tlie streets are all but deserted. But 
with twilight everything changes, and the 
Square fills to the edge with a rather noisy, 
ever-changing and ever-picturesque crowd. 
Tall policemen with long swords in their 
belts march solemnly back and forth, and 
handsome young sailor boys from the 
training-ship rival trig soldiers in red and 
blue for the attentions of the little Dutch 
maidens. The bronzed-faced fisher folk are 
back again, and some of the older men 
gravely bid the stranger good-evening as 
they pass. There are strapping boys of 
eighteen in close-fitting knickerbockers 
like boys of ten, and boys of ten in the long 
trousers and silver-buttoned jackets of 
their fathers. Here is a ditferent group— 
a half-dozen young chaps from town, 
dressed in clothes that are strictly up-to- 
date, and carrying dainty canes, and who 
look out of place laughing with that white- 
capped girl with the wooden shoes. A 
neighboring village, Veere possibly, sends 
in some half-grown lads who wear curious, 
derby-like hats with a very flat crown, and 
straight, narrow brims, that look odd 
enough perched on bushy hair. 

Passing back and forth through the 
crowd are many men and women dressed 


164 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


as London and New York are dressing, 
save that their clothes do not fit. Around 
the outskirts of the throng circle the bi¬ 
cycles, every third one ridden by a white- 
capped, full-skirted Gretchen. All the 
men and most of the boys are smoking, but 
the women refrain. There is much laugh¬ 
ter and not a little horseplay. A boy of 
thirteen or so steps up to a girl and whis¬ 
pers something in her ear, and gets a 
sound smack for his pains, amid shouts of 
laughter from a crowd of older boys who 
put him up to it. Suddenly a song is 
started, and a group begins marching as 
they sing, others join until a hundred men 
and women are tramping to the melody up 
and down the Square. One or two Eng¬ 
lishmen are looking on, but I am the only 
American, for Americans come but seldom 
to this most fascinating and most Dutch of 
towns. Over all are the ever recurrent 
chimes, first a hymn, then a strain from a 
light opera, but always sweet and always 
beautiful. The clock in the Town Hall 
strikes ten, and, at the first stroke, out on 
the balcony below the dial come wooden 
knights mounted and armed, their spears 
striking fiercely on each other ^s shield at 
every stroke of the bell. It is full moon, 


MIDDELBURG, HOLLAND 165 

and after a time its liglit falls fair on the 
glorious carving of the wonderful old hall 
and makes it more wonderful than before; 
it floods the market-place and the queer 
figures moving there. By and by the 
square grows quieter; the people pass and 
do not come again, and soon the great 
space is empty save for the moonlight. 
The stage is silent again, but to-night I 
have seen the play. 


MGVSA^jvgo slavia. 

Ragusa, that ^^western outpost in the 
eastern world/^ is so unlike a city of 
Europe, it has so little of Central Europe 
in its atmosphere, its history, or its popula¬ 
tion, that it seems a mistake to include it as 
one of the picture towns of Europe; and 
particularly a blunder to assign it to the 
recently formed Jugo Slavian nation. Yet 
it is in Europe, in what was once Austria, 
and it is assuredly a picture town. 

Its intense and striking individuality, 
which is, perhaps, its most characteristic 
note, makes it difficult to associate the town 
with any country, and least of all with 
Austria, to the cities of which it bears not 
the slightest resemblance. The only land 
to which it seems at all akin is Italy. And 
this characteristic of an independent in¬ 
dividuality, tempered only by an Italian 
suggestion, is the eminently natural result 
of its geographical position and also of its 
history. 

Ragusa is a city of Dalmatia, and Dal¬ 
matia is a narrow strip of territory ex¬ 
tending north and south for several hun- 

166 



RAGUSA 












V 




EAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 167 

died miles between the mountains and the 
eastern shore of the Adriatic, forty miles 
in width at the widest part, narrowing to 
a mile at Cattaro, its southern extremity. 
Dalmatia is something more, it is the 
yesterday of Europe,’^ the edge of the 
East. From a time as remote as the be¬ 
ginning of recorded history the traffic of 
the old world passed up and down its 
coasts along the highway of the Adriatic. 
Before there was a Rome, purple sails were 
spread upon this sea, and when Rome 
came, her galleys found its waters an easy 
road to conquest. The Crusaders passed 
this way, and here Venice and Genoa bat¬ 
tled for supremacy. Kingdoms and re¬ 
publics here rose and fell, and finally his¬ 
tory moved away and worked out the 
world’s story to the west, leaving these 
people to their own little strifes that were 
not felt beyond their borders, and to per¬ 
petuate in this by-place of the world the 
customs and costumes, the manners and 
the life of a medieval time. And here to¬ 
day, alone among the accessible spots of 
Europe, life has all the vivid picturesque¬ 
ness of the past, and immersed in the 
strangeness of the land, the traveler can 
forget his own life and its interests in be- 


168 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


ing a part of scenes that elsewhere are but 
a tradition and a memory. 

There never was, however, a Dalmatian 
State, or a Dalmatian nation. The Ro¬ 
mans applied the name arbitrarily to the 
provinces they created along the Adriatic’s 
eastern shore, but they were provinces 
peopled by tribes of ditfering racial stock, 
often warring with one another, and at no 
point held together by anything even ap¬ 
proximating national unity. Along the 
coast were Italian cities, but cities whose 
influence did not go back into the interior. 
After the dissolution of the Roman Em¬ 
pire the invading Huns occupied this in¬ 
terior to the practical exclusion of the 
Italian settlers, so that the name ‘‘ Dal¬ 
matia ” came finally to be applied almost 
exclusively to these cities of the coast, 
where alone the Italian element was pre¬ 
served. All through the Middle Ages 
these towns were under tribute to various 
dominant sovereignties, though under¬ 
neath this tributary relation they always 
preserved their Latin, or rather Italian, 
customs, language and independence in 
local affairs. These Dalmatian cities 
were, however, no more held together by 
any political union than were the peoples 


EAGUSA, JUGO SLA VIA 169 

of the interior, but each acted in all things 
independently of the other, so there never 
was, politically, a Dalmatia. 

But, none the less, each city was an out¬ 
post of civilization, a seat of Latin life and 
Latin culture—back of them lay the tribes 
of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And what 
was true then, remains practically true 
now. The people of these Balkan States 
remain, not wholly uncivilized, but less 
civilized than the people of the cities by the 
sea. These Latin cities were like 
islands in a Slavonic ocean; to this day 
Latin and Slav have remained separate 
and distinct in language, character and 
ideals.’^ And therein is found their spe¬ 
cial charm, the charm of the place where 
East meets West and where passes all the 
pageant of the primitive life of a semi- 
Orient, rich in character and color. 

Thus it happens that most of these Dal¬ 
matian towns, while differing in architec¬ 
ture and situation, yet are marked by a 
great similarity in the life and the color 
of life of the people. But this is not true of 
Kagusa; her life is a thing of its own, 
unique now as it has always been. And as 
I said before, this is because of her situa¬ 
tion and her history. Long after Zara, 



170 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUKOPE 


Pola and other Eoman cities had become 
flourishing settlements along the Adriatic, 
the site of Kagusa was but a forest and a 
rock. A Roman Emperor had built, but a 
short sail to the north, where Spalato now 
stands, the greatest palace in the world; 
Rome itself had reached the zenith of her 
career, had paused, and was now trem¬ 
bling before the onslaught of barbarians, 
and still there was no city where Ragusa 
sits to-day. 

Now three miles from Spalato was 
Salona, fairest of Rome’s Dalmatian 
towns. In 619 it fell before the Avars, 
fiercest of the Huns, and to-day it is but a 
strange and solemn ruin, “ the Dalmatian 
Pompeii.” Some of its inhabitants fled to 
the nearby palace of the Emperor Diocle¬ 
tian, and built themselves a city within its 
walls (but that is another story), and some 
escaped to what was then a rocky island to 
the south, and on this rock founded 
Ragusa. Thirty-seven years, later another 
incursion of the Avars destroyed another 
Roman city, and its refugees joined their 
countrymen in the island village. Thus 
augmented, the little settlement bestirred 
itself, a wall was built around the rocky 
shore, a fortress constructed to guard the 



WITHOUT THE WALLS 
RAGUSA 











EAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 171 

narrow channel that separated them from 
the wooded mainland, and the history of 
Eagnsa was begun. 

Founded thus, and at a time when Eome 
was dying, Latin influence came to Eagusa 
second-hand, so that from the start she was 
naturally more responsive to those other 
influences that were to differentiate her 
from other Dalmatian towns. Most im¬ 
portant of these events was when, in 743, 
she admitted to her protection a large 
number of the Slavic tribes who fled 
thither from the tyranny of their king. 
An old chronicle now published by the 
South Slavonic Academy says of this 
event: ^ ^ They came with a great multitude 
of cattle of all sorts, and to them was as¬ 
signed the mountain of St. Serge as a 
pasture, for it was so covered with trees 
that one could not see the sky, and so 
much timber was there that they made 
beams for their houses.’’ Thus early was 
established Eagusa’s reputation for hos¬ 
pitality, a reputation ever afterward main¬ 
tained, being evidenced afresh as late as 
1876, when the Christians of Herzegovina 
fled from the Turkish soldiers in their last 
wild orgy of cruelty which led to Austria’s 
assumption of control. This Slavic settle- 


172 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 

ment had, of course, of itself a great in¬ 
fluence upon the character of Ragusa, and 
tended to make it much more cosmopol¬ 
itan than that of the other coast towns 
which remained, as they were founded, al¬ 
most exclusively Italian. Indeed, Ragusa 
was the only one of these cities where the 
two languages were commonly spoken, and 
the laws adjusted to harmonize with the 
customs of both races. This cosmopol¬ 
itan characteristic was further emphasized 
by the location of the town. Save Cattaro, 
it was nearer to Greece than any other Dal¬ 
matian city; it was close to Montenegro, 
and it was the seaport terminus of the 
natural line of travel along the Narenta 
River that led up into Bosnia and the 
remoter interior. As a consequence of all 
these influences, while Zara and Spalato 
yet retain an atmosphere almost purely 
Italian, Ragusa remains, as during all the 
centuries of its existence, a city that dif¬ 
fers in its life from all other cities, and a 
place where can be found on a market day 
a greater and more brilliant variety of cos¬ 
tumes than are gathered together any¬ 
where else in Europe. In lesser degree all 
these Dalmatian towns present a wonder¬ 
fully fascinating display of form and color 


PvAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 173 

in the dress of the peasants, so that a visit 
to Dalmatia rather spoils one for the rest 
of Europe, which seems somewhat tame 
and commonplace after these splendid 
cities of the Adriatic. But in none of 
these is found that bewildering variety 
that characterizes Ragusa. 

One of the first compromises between 
the original Latin settlers of Ragusa and 
the Slavs whom they had admitted to citi¬ 
zenship was in the matter of a patron 
saint. A patron saint was a town’s badge 
of respectability, indeed, a strict necessity, 
as in those troublous times he took the 
place of a wakeman on the walls, and was 
supposed to guard the city from enemies 
without and within. St. Bacco, with the 
very laying of the walls, had been installed 
as official saint, and had served in that 
capacity to the entire satisfaction of the 
inhabitants. But these new people, these 
Slavs, had brought along their own saint, 
St. Serge, and this had led to complications 
which were happily adjusted when a third 
saint stepped in and saved the town at a 
time when both the other saints appeared 
to be off guard. It happened thus: There 
were pirates in those days, whose galleys 
lay behind many an island, and whose 


174 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


refuge was many a city of those island 
shores. Emboldened by long immunity, 
they actually laid tribute on Venice, and 
finally carried open warfare into the 
sacred waters of her lagoons. Now Venice 
had a theory, and probably a pretty ac¬ 
curate one, that Ragusa, inspired by jeal¬ 
ousy, was back of these bold piratical 
raids, and one dark night her avenging 
fleet silently anchored off Ragusa’s walls. 
What happened is told in the language of a 
priest whose account is still preserved: I 
was in the church of St. Stephen about 
midnight at prayer, when methinks I saw 
the whole fane filled with armed men. And 
in the midst I saw an old man with a long, 
white beard holding a staff in his hand. 
Having called me aside, he told me that 
he was St. Baggio, and had been sent by 
Heaven to defend the city. He told me 
further that the Venetians had come up 
to the walls to scale them, using the masts 
of their ships as ladders, but that he, with 
a company of heavenly soldiers, had driven 
back the enemy.’’ 

Of course, this put an end to the influence 
of both St. Bacco and St. Serge, and ever 
after St. Baggio reigned in their stead. 

As time went on, the control of the city’s 


HAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 175 

government passed beyond tbe walls, and 
brought much adjacent territory within its 
jurisdiction, so that she became a power 
upon the Adriatic second only to Venice. 
Allied with many States, her fleets fought 
in many wars. Noted for their clever 
diplomacy, her rulers, by a threat here, a 
promise there, and ever a tribute to the 
most powerful neighbor of the moment, 
kept invasion from the gates and main¬ 
tained throughout the ages a local self- 
government that was virtually freedom. It 
is true that there were centuries of Vene¬ 
tian supremacy when the chief magistrate 
was a Venetian nominee, and it is also true 
that there were many years of Hungarian 
over-lordship, but at no time was there 
serious interference with the city’s in¬ 
ternal affairs, and finally, in 1526, Ra- 
gusa shook off all semblance of control, 
and became in fact a wholly independent 
power. 

In 1806, foreign troops, for the first time 
in the long history of the Republic, entered 
uninvited, and the Republic fell. 

To-day Ragusa is one of the most beau¬ 
tiful and romantic cities in Europe. It is 
unfortunate that almost invariably she is 
approached from the north. All steamers 


176 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


land at Gravosa, a little harbor a mile or 
so away, and Ragusa is not in sight from 
southbound ships until after Gravosa is 
passed. But coming up the Adriatic, a 
view is had of the city that is unforgettable. 
The Dalmatian mountains are a gray that 
is almost white, their hollows filled with 
lavender shadows, and their gaunt and 
naked forms tinged with blue in the misty 
lights of morning. Against this pale- 
toned background a headland projects 
into the intense purple blue of the sea, 
and on this cliff stands a white-walled 
city, bastions, towers and turrets in 
irregular outline, an unchanged picture 
from medieval times. In his exhaustive 
work on Dalmatia, Mr. T. G. Jackson says 
of this view: ‘ ‘ Ragusa has preserved com¬ 
pletely the character of a medieval city. 
From whatever side you regard her, she 
appears surrounded by a chain of frowning 
towers, and girt by mighty walls, while 
toward the sea she presents nothing hut a 
line of walls and towers crowning the 
verge of an inaccessible precipice. . . . 
Scarcely among all the entrancing shores 
of the Mediterranean and its dependent 
seas can be found scenes to surpass that 
which presents itself as one issues from 


RAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 177 

the Porto Plocce and follows the coast 
southward.’’ 

From the landing-place at Gravosa, 
where black-hulled steamers are being un¬ 
loaded by dark men in red fezzes and jack¬ 
ets, and white trousers, an electric tram 
takes you along a road that, if you are like 
the majority of travelers, is different from 
any you have traveled before. There are 
great trees covered with a strange bloom 
like a dandelion gone to seed, only pink; 
there are enormous aloes with stalks as big 
around as a man’s leg and twenty feet high 
springing out of the center and tufted at 
the top with greenish-yellow bloom; there 
are oleanders growing wild, and there are 
views of mountains, and olive groves, and 
Ihe wonderful blue of the Adriatic glowing 
like some brilliant enamel. The hotel at 
Ragusa, standing apart in its tropical 
garden, is one of the most delightful in 
Europe, and there for a very small price 
one can get delicious table d’hote meals 
of many courses, and a room which should 
satisfy the most exacting. From the one 
I occupied a door opened upon a little 
stone balcony, and here I sat at evening 
and looked out on the climbing lines of 
walls. Over them clung masses of vines, 


178 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 

by them grew palm and cypress, beyond 
them the Adriatic darkened in the evening 
light, and above them lifted the mountain 
peaks, colored like clouds at twilight. 
Around are the brown roofs and the tower¬ 
ing campaniles of the south. Palmettos 
reach almost to the balcony where I am 
sitting; immense trees of oleander sheeted 
with pink, white and red bloom fill the 
air with faint fragrance; pomegranate 
flowers flame amid the ripening fruit, and 
figs hang purple and green in the garden 
below, where the nightingale will soon be 
singing. Across the bay is the island 
where Richard the Lion Hearted was saved 
from shipwreck on his return from the 
Crusades, and on the other side the har¬ 
bor is Lacroma and the home of Maximil¬ 
ian, from whence he sailed to seek Empire 
and find death in Mexico. Everywhere is 
beauty and romance accentuated by sur¬ 
roundings of strange medieval pic¬ 
turesqueness. 

The hotel is outside the walls, but a few 
steps take you to the gate from under 
which the road plunges steeply down be¬ 
tween double walls and dominating towers, 
to an inner gate that lets upon the broad 
main street. This street was once the arm 


KAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 179 

of the sea that separated the rock where 
were the beginnings of Ragusa from the 
wooded mainland. On the left of this 
street the mountain springs abruptly, and 
here the side streets are but flights of 
steps. Here are the shops for which the 
town is noted, filled with strange wares 
of the semi-East, beautiful native em¬ 
broideries, silken shawls rich with gold 
work, heavy buckles of silver filigree set 
with oddly colored stones, jeweled swords 
and huge carven pistols, saddles of beau¬ 
tiful leather, girdles fringed with beads, 
exquisite bags covered with threads of sil¬ 
ver and set with turquoise, a most foreign 
and bewildering display. This street of 
shops leads on to the Rector’s Palace, in 
other words, the Government House, and 
thence it turns to the right into the public 
square ended by the cathedral, from the 
steps of which may be seen a remarkably 
fine picture of medieval environment 
against a background of great mountains. 

In the streets that burrow around the 
houses in this oldest part of the city there 
are seen many houses with I.H.S.” 
carved over the doors. These letters date 
from 1520 and 1521. On May 12th of the 
former year, and for twenty months there- 


180 PICTUEE TOWNS OF' EUEOPE 


after, there were almost continuous shocks 
of earthquake in Kagusa, and these letters 
were ‘‘ placed over the doorways as a sort 
of a passover supplication to the angel of 
the Lord.’’ Earthquakes have been ter¬ 
rible and frequent in Kagusa, the most 
dreadful occurring in 1667, when more 
than five thousand people were killed, and 
the greater part of the city laid in ruins. 
It is said that on an average of every 
twenty years there are shocks so violent as 
to be attended ,with loss of life, while 
lesser ones are of almost annual occur¬ 
rence. 

My first day was Sunday, and more vivid 
than the display in the shop windows, more 
colorful than the glittering wares there ex¬ 
hibited, was the mass of peasant men and 
women filling the long street and the great 
square with an ever-changing gorgeous¬ 
ness of form and color. After all, it is the 
native costumes and native life that give to 
Dalmatia its greatest wonder, and set the 
land apart as the most fascinating coun¬ 
try in Europe. Elsewhere is beautiful 
scenery, mighty mountains, blue water 
and picturesque and storied walls, but no¬ 
where else do all these things combine to 
form a setting for a life so strange, so 


KAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 181 

brilliant and so unknown. These costumes 
are not worn by the dominant Italian ele¬ 
ment of the towns, but are the garb of the 
people from the great outside. Every lit¬ 
tle village around Ragusa’s walls has its 
own distinctive local dress, differing in 
color, in cut, in combination, and on that 
Sunday a thousand villagers thronged the 
streets, each differing from the other in 
glory. It is hard to describe them, but 
there were combinations of every color, 
heavy gold neck chains, silver-embroidered 
scarfs, jeweled bands across the forehead, 
massive belt buckles, long veils a blaze of 
yellow, and others that flamed with red. 
There were Greeks in short white tunics, 
Mohammedans from Sarajevo in flowing 
robes and heavy turbans, who stroked 
their beards in greeting as they passed; 
dashing officers in splendid uniforms; 
white-clad sailor boys from the warship at 
Gravosa, and all the morning long this 
strange and beautiful procession came and 
went through the war-scarred gates, and 
along the wonderful medieval square. 

At noon the shops closed, and the people 
moved out to the cliffs above the sea. Just 
outside the gate and in a little park-like 
space, canvas walls had been run up, and 


182 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

here, later in the afternoon, a troupe of 
traveling acrobats gave a performance. A 
little band played odd music, and some of 
the people went to the show, some sat in 
the shade and talked, and in one corner 
a lot of men in white baggy trousers and 
jackets of red or blue, bright with silver 
buttons, stretched out and slept, each one 
pillowing his head on some convenient por¬ 
tion of his neighbor’s anatomy. With twi¬ 
light the scene changed, the peasants and 
the color vanished, and in their places a 
long line of conventionally clad Italians 
and natives took the air—and with their 
coming Ragusa lost full half its charm. 

It is, of course, but natural that these 
peasant people should keep, in harmony 
with their quaint and ancient costumes, the 
customs and traditions that, during the 
centuries, have become a part of their way 
of living. As a consequence we are per¬ 
mitted here in Dalmatia, and particularly 
in and around Ragusa, to look in upon a 
purely medieval life, and actually to see 
for ourselves what that medieval life was 
like. We can observe its mental attitude, 
obtain a comprehension of its point of 
view, and behold the various influences 
that worked upon and shaped it. Re- 


RAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 183 

ligion, as with most primitive peoples, re¬ 
mains a very intimate part of their daily 
lives, but it is a religion tinged with the 
lingering memory of old faiths and pagan 
culture, pagan rites being grafted on Chris¬ 
tian observance in a manner deeply inter¬ 
esting because illustrative of the manner 
of evolution of a new creed. When 
Dryads lived in the fountains, and harvest 
fields had a special guardian deity, it was 
always necessary to propitiate the god by 
suitable services, and to-day the old cus¬ 
tom has become a Christian rite. For the 
three days before Ascension Day large 
crosses are carried in procession, headed 
by the village priest, around the surround¬ 
ing country, and wherever a spring is 
found the priest recites a prayer and 
blesses it, and the fields, too, are blessed, 
and a prayer offered for their fruitfulness. 

In the old Slavic religion the Sun was 
deified, and on the day corresponding to 
our Christmas was supposed to be born 
again after a long sleep or death. The 
father of the Sun God was the Thunder 
God, and to him the oak was sacred. Now 
see how the Dalmatian descendants of these 
Slavic ancestors have incorporated in their 
Christian observances the faith of their 


184 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


fathers. I take the account from Hamil¬ 
ton Jackson’s The Shores of the Adriatic, 
the best general work on Dalmatia that is 
published in America. 

“ Their greatest festival is Christmas. 
On the Eve they work hard, and before 
sunrise house and yard are decked with 
bay or olive branches, or some other ever¬ 
green which they think protects from light¬ 
ning. A great log of oak is placed on the 
fire, and the head of the family bares his 
head and says, ‘ Blessed be thou, 0 log; 
God preserve thee! ’ and sprinkles wine 
upon it crosswise. Then corn is thrown 
over it, and he invokes every blessing from 
heaven for the health and success of all 
members of the family, present or absent, 
to which the others reply, ‘ Amen,’ and 
say, ‘ Welcome to the evening of the log.’ ” 
Just see how the Christian Amen and 
the symbol of the Thunder God are blended 
and incorporated in this Dalmatian faith! 

All these peasants are extremely fond of 
public festivals, many of which partake of 
the nature of the old miracle plays, many 
commemorate historic events and many 
are but reminiscences of pagan rites. In 
common with the people of the Tyrol, and 
of Brittany in France, and of parts of 


RAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 185 

Cornwall in England, they light huge 
bonfires on midsummer night ^s eve, and 
dance round the blaze with many an in¬ 
cantation. They are a superstitious folk, 
and they fully believe in ghosts, witchcraft 
and in the haunting presence in forest and 
on mountain of gnomes and spirits, 
legitimate descendants of the pagan gods. 
Really there is no country in Europe so 
rich in folklore and ancient customs as 
Dalmatia, those described being but the 
merest hint of the variety to be found 
there. 

The peasant women seem healthy and 
happy, in spite of the fact that they are 
regarded as in all respects inferior and 
subordinate to the men. In the market¬ 
place at Ragusa I was watching a group of 
magnificent Montenegrins, men and 
women, talking most animatedly. When 
they separated, each woman took the hand 
of the man nearest her, and, gracefully 
stooping, kissed it. On inquiry I learned 
that this custom was universal as an ac¬ 
knowledgment of man’s superiority. 

A study of the involved and exceedingly 
interesting form of government of Ragusa 
is beyond the scope of this chapter, but 
some of that government’s accomplish- 


186 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


ments and characteristics are of interest, 
anticipating, as they did, many things 
which we have erroneously come to regard 
as the product of our modern civilization. 

The value of commercial treaties was 
quickly recognized, and very early in the 
Middle Ages Ragusa had negotiated these 
trading agreements with Constantinople, 
Egypt, Bulgaria, most of the Italian cities, 
Spain, France and England. In many of 
these treaties was introduced the element 
of reciprocity by which certain taxes levied 
in foreign ports on merchandise from 
abroad were remitted on Ragusan goods, 
in return for similar concessions on the 
part of the Republic. 

Germany has only recently adopted city 
planning, and America is still mostly 
oblivious to its advantages, yet centuries 
ago, after a great fire had destroyed much 
of the town, the Ragusan authorities 
caused the city to be rebuilt in accordance 
with a carefully prepared plan. Under 
our advanced civilization slavery was an 
existing institution within the memory of 
living men, but slavery was abolished in 
Ragusa in 1417 as base, wicked and 
abominable. In 1435 free schools were 
established, and a few years earlier a 



THE MARKET-PLACE 
RAGUSA 

















EAGUSA, JUGO SLAVIA 187 

foundling hospital had been founded, 
where little waifs were provided for. 
Early in the Fifteenth Century an intel¬ 
ligent system of quarantine was enacted, 
and during the plague, cremation was in¬ 
sisted upon. And, most remarkable of all, 
before the middle of the Thirteenth Cen¬ 
tury, there was international arbitration, 
and an international court of arbitration 
agreed upon for the settlement of disputes 
to which Eagusa was a party. 

All laws of the Eepublic were codified in 
1272, and in his valuable work. The Repub¬ 
lic of Ragusa, Villari says that parts of 
this code, especially those relating to land 
tenure and certain forms of contract, are 
still valid at Eagusa. 

In the beauty of public buildings, of 
fountains and squares, no American city 
of anything like its size can approach this 
old-time city by the Adriatic, and in the 
days of her prosperity her ships were seen 
in infinitely more harbors than those into 
which American merchantmen carry our 
flag to-day. 

There is yet much to tell that must per¬ 
force remain unwritten: of the quaint lit¬ 
tle harbor where fishing-boats idle in the 
hot sun; of the great sweep of the mighty 


188 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


walls, and the pictures made by their 
towers and the mountains and the pointed 
cypress trees and the Adriatic on beyond; 
of the exceeding charm of the old, still 
monasteries, where soft-voiced priests live 
just as of yore amid the palms and 
oranges; of the wonderful things of gold 
and ivory and precious stones to be seen in 
the treasury of the cathedral; of the 
islands to be visited, the drives to be had. 

But why don’t you go yourself? This 
magic city of a magic land is so easy to 
reach. Only a night’s smooth sail from 
Venice to Trieste, and thence a journey of 
but twenty-four hours on splendid, triple¬ 
screw turbine liners, and there you are at 
dinner on that lovely balcony overhanging 
the garden where the figs and pomegran¬ 
ates grow, and the oleanders scent the air, 
and the nightingales sing in the perfumed 
dusk. 


SALZBVRG -AVSTIRJA 

Aside from Venice, there are only two 
large cities in Europe that hold for me any 
charm—London and Naples. Of the 
smaller towns, those which, while no 
longer villages, have yet not reached the 
point where charm is merged in bigness, 
there are, perhaps, a score that are still 
delightful, and of these Salzburg stands 
preeminent. But even so, it is too much 
of a city, in places too cosmopolitan, and 
it was only after a struggle that I yielded 
to the town^s undeniable fascination and 
recognized that, in spite of its size, it is, 
after all, one of the picture towns of 
Europe. This fascination lies partly in 
the wonderful beauty of its situation, 
strongly suggestive of Innshriick, hut more 
particularly in its very foreign and very 
Italian atmosphere. The suggestion of 
Italy, strong though it is, rather eludes 
definition. It is found, perhaps, in the 
many fountains, the strictly Kenaissance 
churches, the occasional frescoes on outer 
walls, in the narrow, crooked streets of the 
old town, and in the mysterious way these 

189 


190 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

streets have of vanishing through arch¬ 
ways under buildings that are thrown 
boldly across them. Most of all, it de¬ 
pends on the bright, sunny light, and the 
good-natured crowds which you see in the 
streets. 

The merely foreign effect is easy to lo¬ 
cate and describe. It is in the carriages 
with a single shaft in the middle and the 
horse at one side, with the outside trace 
of rope; it is in the queer ox-carts, guided 
often by peasant girls; in the women cross¬ 
ing-sweepers, carrying twig brooms; in the 
bareheaded, brown-coated friars, bare¬ 
footed save for sandals; in the long pipes 
the men smoke, hanging far down on their 
vests; in the frequent shrines on the street 
corners, with sad-faced Christs and burn¬ 
ing lamps before them; in the many 
Tyrolean costumes of the men and hoys, 
green the prevailing color, with the little 
peaked hat and jaunty feather, knee- 
breeches of leather, and half-hose, the 
short little coat and waistcoat bright with 
silver buttons. The school children, too, 
are different; some of the boys trudge 
along bareheaded, with a long black apron 
reaching from neck to knee, others wear 
the colorful dress of the Tyrol, but all have 



THE HEART OF THE CITY 
SALZBURG 






































SALZBUEG, AUSTRIA 191 

knapsacks for luncheon or school-books 
strapped over their shoulders. 

Salzburg lies in a rather narrow valley, 
stretched along both sides of a river. The 
view down this valley is a glorious one, 
ending in the dim and ragged profile of a 
snow-streaked mountain. On the right 
rises a naked peak of singular savageness 
of outline, while from it there sweeps a 
vast circle of other mountains. In the 
center of the picture and of the town rises 
a lofty rock with sheer, precipitous sides, 
capped with the picturesque and irregular 
pile of a great castle. 

The old part of the city lies on the side 
of the river across from the station and 
the newer section, and is huddled under the 
cliff of the Monchsberg that rises straight 
above the labyrinth of streets to a height 
of two hundred feet and more. There is 
something curiously aggressive in the ap¬ 
pearance of this long wall of rock that 
seems to be seeking to push the houses at 
its base into the river, and something 
equally curious in the way you reach the 
top, by spidery, Eiffel-like iron towers 
within which elevators run. Under its 
shadow the little streets turn every- 
which-way,’’ as if seeking to escape, and in 


192 PICTURE TOAVNS OF EUROPE 


tlieir narrow ways the congested traffic 
often comes to a deadlock, a confused and 
vociferous mass of struggling horses, ex¬ 
cited drivers, impassive ox-teams and 
shouting peasants. One street finally gets 
away and, dodging through a tunnel be¬ 
neath the cliff, comes out on views of 
green fields and gray mountains and little 
villages upon the other side. Many of the 
drinking-shops in this quarter have a char¬ 
acter quite their own. Cavernous open¬ 
ings in the high, blank walls lead through 
dim passages into wine-rooms that have 
stone floors and vaulted ceilings. In no 
other town have I noticed this trick of 
burrowing into far places, where the 
roystering citizens may make merry, un¬ 
disturbed and undisturbing. 

Close under the rock, and by a Renais¬ 
sance church that looks as if transported 
from Italy, is the market-place, crowded 
on Thursdays with the country people, 
who, under their white umbrellas, have all 
sorts of things for sale; flowers in heaps of 
vivid color, cherries, peas, onions, bits of 
home-made lace, fish from the river, all a 
mass of picturesque confusion. Some of 
the women have head-dresses of big bows of 
black ribbon, not unlike those worn by the 


SALZBUEG, AUSTRIA 193 

girls of Alsace-Lorraine; some are very 
old, some very young, but all are laughing 
and chatting, and none but has a pleasant 
word for the passerby. The same courte¬ 
ous, charming manners that so distinguish 
the Bavarian people of all classes, just 
across the Austrian border, are noticeable 
here, and differentiate sharply these peo¬ 
ple of Salzburg from their less agreeable 
countrymen further to the east. 

None of the churches in Salzburg is very 
impressive; no Renaissance church ever 
can be for me, not even St. Peter’s at 
Rome, but the church in this Austrian city 
that is best worth while is in the striking 
square of St. Peter’s, and is the name¬ 
sake of the great Italian edifice. The in¬ 
terior is stately, but cold, the only color 
being found in the gorgeous altar, and in 
the many paintings forming panels in the 
ceiling. But it is too light, too white, to 
carry any emotional appeal, and yet it is 
the best of the Salzburg churches. There 
is, however, altogether too much to see in 
and around the city to spend much time on 
churches, so much to see, in fact, that I 
shall not attempt even to catalogue the 
points of interest—your guide book will tell 
you of them, and they are all worth a visit. 


194 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


And, perhaps, most interesting of all is 
the man in the street. One Sunday after¬ 
noon I was sitting on a bench on the shady 
side of the road watching the crowd, when 
by-and-by down the length of the highway 
came a strange procession. First a 
crucifer, his white cotta belted tightly 
around him, holding aloft the cross and 
Christ, then, in full and gorgeous vest¬ 
ments, a priest who, as he walked, read 
aloud from a book, then several hundred 
bareheaded men, and then, perhaps, a thou¬ 
sand women and children, and all of them 
—men, women and children—were reciting 
something in a weird monotone, not in 
unison, but each independent of the other. 
It was not a song, nor was it a chant; it 
might have been a creed or a prayer, but 
it was endless, and as, with the passing of 
the people, the great sound came fainter 
and fainter, the etfect was curious in the 
extreme. 

One of the most singular and interesting 
places in the city is the Capuchin monas¬ 
tery that stands upon a densely wooded 
hill directly over against the castle. You 
enter the domain from one of the main 
streets through an archway under a four- 
story building that is built directly over 


SALZBUEG, AUSTRIA 195 

the way. Thence hundreds of steps wind 
up the mountain side, with shrines at short 
distances containing life-size figures that 
tell the story of the crucifixion. Presently 
you come to an ancient, frowning gateway 
through which the way still leads upward, 
until it culminates in the final act of the 
passion. On a grassy knoll, approached 
by wide steps, stands a temple-like struc¬ 
ture, open on all sides, the roof supported 
by time-worn columns of stone, beneath 
which three tall crosses stand, the center 
one upholding a greater than life-size fig¬ 
ure of the Crucified, upon the other two the 
thieves. At the foot are kneeling the 
women and that Apostle Jesus loved. I 
know nothing of the art involved, but 
whether crude or whether really good, 
these figures make their story very vital. 
While I looked, two boys came by and knelt 
in a reverence that was real, and after a 
time went their way, the better, I am sure, 
for that brief prayer. 

But the monastery lies still beyond and 
still upward. At a gate, strong enough to 
have answered for defense in the troublous 
days that sometimes came to Salzburg in 
the olden time, a pull at a long rope hang¬ 
ing from the wall sets a bell to jangling 


196 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


and brings a brown-clad brother to admit 
you to the dense and beautiful forest that 
lies within. Under the great trees paths 
lead in every direction, and some go higher 
to the very top, and some go down to quiet 
hollows, one to the monastery itself, and 
others to open spaces from which are seen 
the most beautiful views in Salzburg. 
From these places the mountains seem 
very near, with the mists continually form¬ 
ing and reforming about them in a wonder¬ 
ful way, rolling along their deep ravines, 
closing upon their peaks, and melting again 
to nothing. Between the mountains and 
the monastery hill the river runs, and Salz¬ 
burg lies dominated by the castle on its 
rock. 

More charming, however, than the view, 
are the forest paths. I know no other city 
where the magic of the woods is brought so 
close, for as you loiter on, with only the 
squirrels and the birds for company, from 
far below you can hear through the leafy 
barriers the clang of trolley cars, and the 
dull, steady roar of the city’s life. I had 
wandered far into the green depths of the 
woods where there was final silence from 
the noise, when suddenly, and with star¬ 
tling clearness, came the sound of an organ 


SALZBUEG, AUSTRIA 197 

and the chant of a choir; the monks were at 
prayer. It was very impressive, listening 
to the sweet sound of that hidden service 
alone in the woods at Salzburg. 

Not only is the town full of interest in 
itself, hut there are few places in any coun¬ 
try from which so many fascinating excur¬ 
sions can so easily be made. There are 
mountains to be scaled in a few hours by 
funicular railway, and others involving 
real climbing, requiring guides and several 
days to achieve. There are beautiful castles 
in lonely places, on little islands in green 
lakes, on lofty crags, or amidst the verdure 
of flower-painted pastures. There are 
historic chateaux surrounded by rare 
gardens, where fountains play from unex¬ 
pected corners. And there are walks and 
drives through romantic mountain scenery, 
or along still waters and through tree-set 
villages. 

But most wonderful of all is the trip to 
the Konigsee, perhaps the very strangest 
and most impressive lake in Europe, and 
certainly the most beautiful body of water 
in either Germany or Austria. Even the 
way thither is an experience one will never 
forget. The little train follows the valley 
that leads toward the snow-streaked 


198 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


mountain which becomes tremendously im¬ 
posing in its massiveness as you come 
nearer. Almost at the valley entrance we 
pass one great peak that steps out into 
the plain in splendid aloofness from the 
range behind. Clouds lie along its sheer 
sides, but the summit shows out vividly 
against the blue. Through little villages, 
eminently Swiss in character, with stones 
weighting the roofs of the houses, and 
crossing and recrossing the foamy river, 
the railroad steadily climbs, and soon, 
though mid-July, the snow is close at hand 
upon the mountain sides. I can recall no 
journey more replete with savage grandeur 
than this road among the mountains from 
Salzburg, and nowhere in Switzerland or 
the Tyrol is a more exquisite village than 
the clean little town of Berchtesgaden, 
where you change cars, and where, if you 
are wise, you will stay for a day on your 
return to Salzburg. Overhanging the 
place is a snow-girdled peak strongly sug¬ 
gestive of the Matterhorn, and from every 
foot of the attractive streets are views of 
exceeding loveliness. Close by the station 
is a tiny chapel, the smallest I have ever 
seen, with just four seats, and an altar that 
completely fills one whole side. At almost 



SALZBURG 










SALZBURG, AUSTRIA 199 

every corner of the town are shrines where 
someone is always kneeling, and which add 
not a little to the charm of this gem village 
among the peaks. 

The Konigsee itself is a curious, narrow 
lake of bottlegreen water. At one side of 
the little landing-place strange, flat-bot¬ 
tomed boats, each with a crew of a man 
and a woman in native costume, wait for 
passengers, and at a pier a short distance 
away a rival motor-boat bids for traffic. 
The round trip in the boat with the rowers 
takes five hours. Around this marvelous 
lake the mountains leap perpendicularly 
from the water, many of them rising a mile 
into the air. Patches of snow lie white 
against their gray sides, and fleecy clouds 
occasionally band their stern flanks. It is 
a lake of incredible loneliness. There is 
no room for any house along these cliffs, 
lifting so abruptly from the water’s edge; 
no man can ever scale their tremendous 
sides; no beach can fringe the rocks that 
plunge directly down far into the trans¬ 
parent depths; no roads can ever descend 
to these shores save at the head and the 
foot of the lake. Only at one or two places 
do the mountains give back even for a fe^ 
feet, and at one of these clusters the little 


200 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


hamlet of St. Bartholomew, where the 
voyagers stop for luncheon on their return. 

The middle-aged man and woman who 
constituted my crew chatted like lovers 
for the entire voyage, and I would have 
given much to know what these isolated 
peasants found to talk of so pleasantly, 
and so long. They were dressed in 
Tyrolean costume, and took turns at the 
heavy oar, only occasionally rowing to¬ 
gether. When about half-way down the 
lake the man produced a pistol of aston¬ 
ishing antiquity, and, pouring into it some 
powder, set it off, awakening the most 
marvelous series of echoes I have ever 
heard. 

But the real wonder waits at the end of 
the voyage. As you land, an amphitheater 
opens in the mountains and a path leads 
towards it. Going forward, the giant 
walls narrow upon you; straight ahead 
might be the end of the world. Over a 
mile high, and perpendicularly above you, 
tower the naked rocks, and then suddenly 
you come upon a painted lake, the Obersee, 
lying rippleless at their base. So extraor¬ 
dinary and so vivid is the color that I be¬ 
lieve it to be without parallel. The shelv¬ 
ing shore is copper-green, visible far out 


SALZBURG, AUSTRIA 201 

from the beach, and blending on this color 
and wonderfully intensified are the browns, 
yellows and purples that, in long streaks, 
stain the cliffs. The marvelous picture is 
completed by a ribbon of a waterfall that 
tumbles from a shelf a thousand feet up 
the mountain side. Nowhere have I ever 
experienced such a sense of remoteness. 
There is nothing but the overwhelming 
mountains and the strange, still lake. 

The history of Salzburg is written in the 
grim walls of its castle. Rome, of course, 
was here, and after the barbarian invasion 
had left the city a heaped-up pile of ruins, 
a desolation settled down upon it that re¬ 
mained undisturbed for a century. Then, 
when order and religion came creeping 
back, the Church acquired the ruined town 
and gradually made of it, under the rule of 
bishop princes, the dominant power of the 
eastern Alps, a power that steadily grew 
until, after a long siege of its almost im¬ 
pregnable citadel, the Emperor Barbarossa 
captured and destroyed the town in 1167. 
But time brought back the ecclesiastical 
rule, and with years of peace, alternating 
with savage and sometimes successful re¬ 
bellion, the city remained in the hands of 
its priestly rulers until Napoleon came, 


202 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

when, on March 11th, 1803, the then arch¬ 
bishop resigned his temporal power, and 
Salzburg became part of the Empire. 
After the passing of Napoleon the city be¬ 
came eventually incorporated into the em¬ 
pire of Austria, as it still remains, though 
yet preserving a local government and 
parliament of its own. These soldier 
monks maintained a great magnificence in 
the castle on the hill, a splendor that is 
still easy to realize when in the sumptuous 
rooms of state. 

An inclined railway carries the traveler 
up from the town and leaves him upon a 
platform backed by the lofty ramparts of 
the fortress, and fronting a magnificent 
view that embraces the city, the wooded hill 
of the Capuchin monastery and to the left 
the far, misty plains of Bavaria. The Ger¬ 
mans and Austrians have a most repre¬ 
hensible passion for inserting a restaurant 
into the most sublime of landscapes, so 
here, at eleven o^clock in the morning, 
crowds are seated on the platform eating 
sausages and onions and things, and blow¬ 
ing froth from schooners of beer, all of 
which effectually prevents one getting in 
very great harmony with the romantio 
past, or the beautiful landscape. 



ON THE KONIGSEE 
'SALZBURG 






SALZBURG, AUSTRIA 203 

You are taken into the courtyard 
through a long, vaulted entrance, and 
thence by narrow and twilit corridors, 
where all sorts of things might have hap¬ 
pened, and up dark stairs that circle 
steeply within the thickness of the walls, 
to the state apartments, splendid with 
their ceilings of red and blue and gold, 
but otherwise empty and deserted. In the 
great hall the roof is upheld by four spiral 
columns of red granite, and the hinges to 
the various doors are wonderful examples 
of iron work, spreading their delicate and 
elaborate scrolls clear across the panel. 
In what must have been a bedroom the 
ceiling has the etfect of being upheld by 
numerous wooden pillars along the walls, 
at the top of each a little shrine with a 
carved or painted figure of the Virgin or 
the Christ. 

Down below are the dungeons and tor¬ 
ture chambers found in every medieval 
castle, and their grimness and the splendor 
of the rooms above, and the thick walls 
and massive towers, bring out from the 
past a perfect picture of a feudal fortress, 
and help to visualize vividly the fierce and 
yet luxurious life that long ago was lived 
there. 


'SWITZERLAND 



We have come to regard Switzerland as 
an entertainment, and not as a nation, and 
its inhabitants as an entertainment com¬ 
mittee instead of a people. True, no place 
on earth is so traveled by tourists, or so 
thoroughly organized in their interests. 
No other country takes its visitors so seri¬ 
ously or finds in their presence its chief 
source of revenue. And yet I have always 
felt that, hidden away somewhere, was a 
Switzerland, not of the tourist, but a 
Switzerland of the Swiss, where the people 
lived a life of daily, personal events into 
which the traveler did not enter. And in 
the summer of 1911 I found the place. 
Think of it! A town in Switzerland with 
neither carriage nor omnibus at the rail¬ 
way station, without a guide, without a 
hotel that is anything more than a pension; 
a town where the American is still a curi¬ 
osity, and where the people live in their 
own olden way, doing the daily tasks of 
existence as they have done them for cen¬ 
turies; a town where old customs and old 
traditions are still an abiding force, and 


GRUYEEES, SWITZERLAND 205 

the ways of the outsider are still unknown 
and his influence unfelt. And such is the 
town of Gruyeres. 

By years of contact with the people of 
every nation, the Swiss have become the 
most cosmopolitan race in Europe, and it is 
only here and there in a few isolated vil¬ 
lages that can now be found a life that is 
different, and surroundings that are in 
harmony with the primitive needs of that 
life and of the country’s past. But 
Gruyeres is a town of and for the people, 
of the peasants. There are a few Germans 
and some French who go there, and Eng¬ 
lish people go over from Interlaken for the 
day, but few Americans ever find it, and 
the town makes no attempt to attract or 
entertain the traveler. It is merely the 
home of a few hundred Switzers, and that 
is all. 

The village gives its name to the valley, 
famous everywhere for its cheese, and this 
valley lies in the canton of Fribourg, and 
about a third of the way between Montreux 
on Lake Geneva and Interlaken. 

The scenery is not typical of the tour¬ 
ist’s Switzerland; no glacier lays its cold 
hand upon the valley to check the growth 
of the great trees that shade the hurrying 


206 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


brooks; no snow-shrouded peaks are vis¬ 
ible. The winds are mild, the skies and the 
sun are bright, the pastures are vivid with 
lush green grass, and the far reaches of 
the valley are set about with farmhouses 
and red-roofed villages. Stately moun¬ 
tains frame the picture on every side, some 
near and some only suggested through the 
blue spaces of the air, but their forms are 
all broken into picturesque irregularity, 
and the peaks of some tower far above the 
tree line, shafts of naked granite. Over 
the mountains, and through scenery that is 
charming, rather than awe-inspiring, runs 
an electric railroad that, by Gruyeres and 
Bulle, connects Montreux with Fribourg; 
while a branch to the east passes through 
a wilder land to the lake of Thun. It is 
only in the last three or four years that 
these electric lines have been put in opera¬ 
tion, and while a handsome diner runs on 
several of the trains, and a frequent 
service is maintained, the route and the 
districts traversed yet remain an undiscov¬ 
ered Switzerland to the vast majority of 
visitors. In an article on Gruyeres pub¬ 
lished abroad in 1906 the author wonders 
why ‘‘ this earthly Paradise has failed 
to attract more attention, and Tissot 



THE MAIN STREET AND MARKET-PLACE 

GRUYERES 













GRUYERES, SWITZERLAND 207 

speaks of this picturesque little feudal 
town forgotten by progress,’’ and calls its 
fortress the most beautiful old castle in 
Switzerland.” 

You leave the train at a little station in 
the green fields where there is not even the 
remotest sign of a town. One or two boys 
are lounging on the platform, and as the 
train departs they vanish. Not a person is 
visible, nor a house—you are alone in the 
quiet of the mountains. A white road, 
however, clearly leads somewhere, and you 
recall that half a mile back there was a 
brief view from the car window of a rare 
old town on a hill, and so, with the thrill of 
joy of a real explorer, you set off alone 
along the winding way. At last a turn 
brings the old walled village into view, 
strung along on the edge of a narrow ridge 
of rock and splendidly backgrounded by 
two great mountain peaks. The first view 
suggests a smaller Rothenburg, an im¬ 
pression that is emphasized on closer ap¬ 
proach by the gates, and by the construc¬ 
tion of the walls, the gallery along the lat¬ 
ter being almost identical with that found 
in the German city. Here, however, the 
walls have been allowed to crumble away 
at many points, and at no place can you 



208 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

walk upon them. The road climbs the hill 
and, through a gate once fortified, enters 
upon the one broad, short street, more mar¬ 
ket-place than street, where centers the life 
of the village. Here a fountain splashes 
water into a great stone basin where 
women are washing the family linen, and 
crowding closely but irregularly about are 
ancient buildings, with far projecting 
eaves, upon the fronts of many appearing 
dates centuries old. 

As at Rothenburg, many of the windows 
are piled deep with fiowers, and vines clam¬ 
ber over the doorways. At one end, where 
the street parts to right and left and one 
way seeks the castle and the other the 
lovely valley beyond the wall, stands a 
shrine, a life-sized Christ raised high upon 
the cross with a statue of Mary and of 
John on either hand. Beyond this lifts 
an irregular pile of red roofs, and at the 
right opens a vista closed by the castle 
tower. At one side of the square is a long 
stone, curiously hollowed into a number of 
bowl-like depressions. This is the stand¬ 
ard measure for corn and grain. The 
seller fills the bowl corresponding in size 
to the amount required by his customer, 
who draws the plug from the sloping, fun- 


GKUYERES, SWITZERLAND 209 

nel-like opening at the bottom, and the 
grain slides into his bag below. 

In the doorways girls are embroidering, 
the fine linen drawn tightly over a cir¬ 
cular frame, and as they work, they laugh 
and gossip. Boys come in from the forest 
and add the fagots on their backs to the 
great heaps of winter fuel piled high by 
the side of every house. The famous cat¬ 
tle are missing. As the snows begin to 
melt in the springtime the cattle are driven 
to pasture. At first this is close to the 
village, but as the ice recedes farther and 
farther up the mountainside, the cattle fol¬ 
low after, and now, for it is August, they 
are up on the great heights. 

A rambling old building bearing the date 
of 1653 answers for the inn. The ceilings 
are wonderfully low, and the floors creak 
at every step. There are dark halls and 
little steps that lead down or up into un¬ 
expected places. In the dining-room is a 
queer-looking clock built into the wall and 
flush with it, so that the face stares out at 
you most curiously. I was the only man at 
luncheon. Around the long table were ten 
ancient dames, some frankly so, some pro¬ 
testing by their odd blond hair. By each 
plate was a thick little embroidered square, 


210 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


like the old-fashioned holders ’’ your 
grandmother used to make, and this, I 
afterward discovered, was where you were 
to put your bread, which was bestowed in 
chunks. In front of the oldest guest of 
all was a huge round loaf, which presently 
she seized upon and divided into as many 
parts as there were people at table. Dur¬ 
ing this ceremony we all remained stand¬ 
ing. After the bread was distributed, 
most of the women took a knife and 
scraped out their portion, discarding the 
hard, brown crust. The first course was a 
great platter of heaped-up mashed po¬ 
tatoes and sausages. After this the plates 
were removed, but we kept our knives and 
forks, and green stuff followed that looked 
like spinach, but wasn’t. Then came fruit 
and something that looked like pie. And 
when I paid my bill the waitress refused a 
tip! 

I think that in the old times the town 
had but two entrances, the principal one 
leading into the market-place from the 
road that comes up from the station, and 
the one that, to the right of the shrine, goes 
down by the church and thence along a 
forest path to the valley on the other side 
the ridge. At present, however, there is 



OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS 
GRUYERES 















GRUYERES, SWITZERLAND 211 

a tliird way out to the world, at the end 
of the market-place opposite the shrine an 
opening having been in recent years cut 
through the old defenses. The road by the 
church and the forest path leads into one 
of the most exquisite bits of valley I have 
ever seen. Great mountains form the 
background, not snow-capped and somber, 
but irregular, picturesque peaks, some 
wooded to the very top, and others great 
obelisks of naked rock. Down through the 
midst a little river flows. Houses from 
picture-books; patches of dense forest; far 
white churches; everywhere silence, and 
sunshine and air that is good to breathe. 

At ease under the shade of a tree, watch¬ 
ing the picturesque line of wall, and the 
castle that shows its towers through the 
trees, walls and castle that so distinctly 
bring yesterday into to-day, one’s mind 
turns instinctively to speculation as to 
what that yesterday was like. What hap¬ 
pened here In days of old when knights 
were bold, and barons held their sway ”? 

The history of Switzerland is difficult 
to comprehend. Forgotten men move 
through its pages, and war’s alarms sound 
continually along the years. A labyrinth 
of detail overlays and obscures the events 


212 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


of real importance, and to estimate cor¬ 
rectly the relative value of the thousand 
battles, the conflicts of ambitions and the 
feuds of States, is possible only to the 
trained historian. When the great empire 
of Charlemagne broke into its component 
parts early in the eight hundreds, Gruyeres 
became a separate State, ruled independ¬ 
ently by its Count, whose successors main¬ 
tained their court in the castle in the vil¬ 
lage for centuries. The little kingdom 
warred at times with its brother States, 
with Berne and Fribourg, and again its 
soldiers fought side by side with men from 
many cantons against a common enemy. 
Out from the years tradition brings the 
memory of brave deeds, of counts gallant 
and others weak and spendthrift, of names 
and acts, of battles and sieges that are 
elsewhere long forgotten. 

No one seems to know when the castle 
was built, but there is a tradition of it that 
harks back to the first crusade. For days, 
away otf in that far time, the little town 
and the province of which it was the cap¬ 
ital, had felt the wild contagion of the re¬ 
ligious fervor that Peter the Hermit had 
kindled. William I, then ruler of 
Gruyeres, yielding to the common impulse 


GRUYERES, SWITZERLAND 213 

of tlie hour, called all his knights and vas¬ 
sals to meet upon a day within the great 
hall and courtyard of the castle, there to 
discuss the duty of Christian knights and 
gentlemen toward the warfare Christen¬ 
dom was declaring against the infidel. 
Now, the women viewed with disapproval 
the proposal that husband and sweetheart 
should leave them for the distant battle¬ 
fields of Palestine; so they conspired to¬ 
gether, (and, incidentally, kept the secret) 
and when all the knights and all the men-at- 
arms, the horsemen and the bowmen were 
within the castle, the women shut the gates 
and barred them fast from without. Then 
these early suffragettes sent an ambas¬ 
sador, who laid down the law to the pris¬ 
oned warriors that they would be kept 
within the castle until such time as they 
pledged knightly word to refrain forever 
from joining the present or any future 
crusade. But the ungallant men simply 
smashed open the door, and eventually 
they marched away, the Count’s banner 
bearing the words, ‘‘We go; let him who 
can return.” 

These women of Gruyeres appear to 
have always been a resourceful lot. Once 
when all the men were with the cattle on 


214 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

the mountains, or at war with their neigh¬ 
bors, and only the women and children re¬ 
mained within the town, the hostile army 
of Berne sat down before the walls. But 
the women did not despair. When night 
came on they gathered together several 
hundred goats and, fastening flaming 
torches between their horns, opened the 
gates and drove them down upon the 
enemy. Now, in those days witches still 
dwelt in the forest and goblins yet lived 
in the mountains, so when the Bernese saw 
this army of flaming demons charging their 
camp, they fled incontinently, and the town 
was saved. 

A century and more passes, and legend 
becomes busy with the fame of a wild 
young ruler of Gruyeres, Count Antoine. 
Standing one evening on the terrace over¬ 
looking the valley, where now the visitor 
waits the opening of the castle doors, he 
saw a long procession of youths and maids 
dancing down the valley to the sound of a 
flute of singular sweetness. As the leap¬ 
ing figures came nearer and the flute notes 
reached him more plainly, a spell was laid 
upon him, and as in a trance he was drawn 
through the village gate and down the twi¬ 
light way to the dusky valley and on un- 



A GATEWAY OF 
GRUYiRES 



















GRUYERES, SWITZERLAND 215 

der the stars, as mile after mile the dancers 
swept him forward into the dim, remote re¬ 
cesses of the mountains where lies the 
Land of Fay. Three days later he was 
found half-conscious by a distant roadside. 
What happened he would never say, but he 
drooped and pined within the walls of 
Gruyeres until one day they found him 
on the terrace dead, his face toward th,e 
valley as if listening for the magic flute; 
and his brother, who was a hard sort, 
reigned in his stead and raised the king¬ 
dom to great power and place. And to 
this day, though whether the custom re¬ 
lates to the old fable I cannot tell, when 
the harvest is over, and St. Martin’s sum¬ 
mer is on the bare land, and the moon 
shines yellow through the autumn haze, 
there starts from Gruyeres a strange 
dance of the peasant boys and girls. Out 
from the red-topped gate, down from the 
old gray walls, the long procession dances. 
On and on through the long, long valley, 
and from every hamlet other couples come, 
and the dance goes on and on, and some¬ 
times night finds hundreds of tired dancers 
far from home. They tell a tale that once 
upon a time this dance began on a Sunday 
with but seven in the line, and ended on a 


216 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

Tuesday, leagues away, with seven hun¬ 
dred dancers. 

It was in the Fifteenth Century that the 
little State reached its most splendid 
period. In the great hall of the castle, 
around the long table that is still there, the 
Count and his knights held their court, and 
decided issues of peace and war, and life 
and death. Down below were the 
dungeons, at one side the torture chamber. 
But there is an ugly tale that at times the 
prisoner was trussed and brought in to fry 
within the vast fireplace of the hall, where 
even oxen can be roasted whole. While 
the Count passed on grave matters in the 
hall, in another room there was another 
court maintained, called the Court of Folly, 
presided over by the Count’s pet fool, a 
wise man named Gerard Chalamala. Here 
were planned the amusements for the week, 
the plays and entertainments that earned 
for the Count’s court the title of the Little 
Paris. The fool’s house still stands, and 
within are still to be read the maxims he 
painted on the walls. One reads, “ The 
content that comes with age and which we 
call the fruit of wisdom, is but the first 
decay of mind and body. ” So I say Chala¬ 
mala was a wise fool. 


GEUYERES, SWITZERLAND 217 

But there came an end to the Counts of 
Gruyeres. The gay court and its ex¬ 
travagant life exhausted the resources of 
the family and the people. Creditors 
clamored at the castle door, and the condi¬ 
tion finally raised a scandal in the con¬ 
federation. In 1554, Michael I, the then 
Count of Gruyeres, was declared a bank¬ 
rupt and ordered dethroned. In vain he 
appealed to his people to pay his debts and 
take his property, that only he might live 
among them. The end had come. At pub¬ 
lic sale the estate was bid in by the cantons 
of Berne and Fribourg, and the independ¬ 
ence of Gruyeres ceased forever. Gradu¬ 
ally the castle fell to ruin, and not so many 
years ago the cantons determined to sell it 
to a contractor to demolish for building 
material. Then, fortunately, an artist, 
Daniel Bovy of Geneva, bought the prop¬ 
erty. Under his skillful and artistic di¬ 
rection its restoration was made complete. 
The ancient banners, torn by Saracen 
spears, were hung again in the hall. The 
queer little brass cannon that of old 
guarded the ivy-grown courtyard, were 
once more placed in position. Much of the 
old furniture was rescued from decay, and 
now occupies its old-time place. Answer- 


218 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


ing his call, his fellow artists forsook their 
studios in Paris, and Corot, Baron and 
others have painted upon the panels of the 
walls of one of the private apartments the 
history of Gruyeres, in pictures vivid and 
strong as the deeds they depict. So mod¬ 
ern luxury finds a home now in the old 
castle, but in the town itself nothing is 
changed, and the traveler enters there into 
the past of a brave and sturdy people, and 
upon a scene that for picturesqueness and 
beauty has no equal in the land of the Alps. 





A BIT OF THE ANCIENT WALL 
ROTHENBURG 




























ROTHENBVRG-germany 

Many writers and nearly all artists 
agree that the most picturesque towns in 
Europe are Mont St. Michel and Carcas¬ 
sonne in France, San Gimignano in Italy 
and Rothenburg in Bavaria. Of these, 
Mont St. Michel is probably the most re¬ 
markable and Carcassonne the most im¬ 
pressive, but Rothenburg is certainly the 
most lovable. It is not far from Nurem- 
burg, with which it is often compared. But 
while Nuremburg possesses magnificent, 
artistic monuments, it is entirely in¬ 
adequate as an illustration of what a 
medieval town was like. It is big, noisy 
and prosperous. Rothenburg, on the 
other hand, offers a complete and perfect 
idea of the environment amid which Ger¬ 
mans of the Middle Ages lived. It is set 
upon beautiful hills, still entirely sur¬ 
rounded by ancient walls with their battle- 
mented towers all unchanged by the pres¬ 
ence of the Twentieth Century. Through 
its gate runs the road to yesterday, and 
once within, to-day grows very remote, and 
there are actually incarnate before you the 

219 


220 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


streets, tlie dwellings, the public places, 
where men lived, and fought, and loved, 
and romanced five centuries and more ago. 

In nearly every other medieval city that 
the writer has visited, the town has out¬ 
grown the old walls, and the new build¬ 
ings hide the ancient ramparts and pre¬ 
vent the approach presenting to you that 
same picturesque view which the men of 
the Middle Ages had of the towered walls 
and piled-up roofs and spires within. But, 
with the exception of the houses that have 
sprung up along the road leading from the 
little railroad station to the Roder-Tor, 
which is one of the city gates, Rothenburg 
still lies wholly within the walls, so that 
from every point of view, save the rail¬ 
road station, the town looks now as you 
come upon it exactly as it did in the Middle 
Ages—looks for all the world like one of 
Howard Pyle’s illustrations in his Arthu¬ 
rian stories. 

The city is built upon a plateau that 
brings the level country to its walls on 
every side but the west; here the land 
falls steeply away directly from the base 
of the walls, to the valley of the Tauber 
some three hundred feet below; and from 
these western walls, and for miles along 


EOTHENBURG, GERMANY 221 

the river are some of the most beautiful 
sylvan views in Bavaria. Indeed, it is this 
very combination of beauty both within and 
without the walls to which Rothenburg 
owes the charm that so endears it to vis¬ 
itors. And this charm lies in the unique 
blending of rural beauty with a medieval 
picturesqueness absolutely unimaginable, 
imparting in some subtle way a sense of 
profound and exquisite peacefulness, a 
peacefulness that lingers in my memory as 
the dominant fact of Rothenburg. 

As we sat at dinner on the hotel balcony 
at Wurtzburg and gazed across the dark¬ 
ening river to the castle fortress silhouet¬ 
ted against the green sky, my friend, the 
architect, who will always be a boy, ex¬ 
claimed, Let’s go to Rothenburg now and 
get the thrill of entering the walls at mid¬ 
night! ” So from nine o’clock until al¬ 
most twelve we crawled along in a half-lit 
train. We changed to the little Rothen¬ 
burg line at a station that seemed fittingly 
mysterious in the dim light of an occa¬ 
sional lantern. From here on the train 
had only third-class carriages, and only a 
passenger or two asleep in the corners. 

At Rothenburg the night air was cool 
and damp; every now and then came the 


222 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

perfume of flowers. The hotel porter took 
our baggage and we followed him. Pres¬ 
ently we saw the dim line of a lofty wall, 
the lift of a great tower; there was a bridge 
across a moat, a weird space surrounded 
by walls, another tower only partly seen 
in the darkness, and then a long 
street that seemed to come up out of a 
dream, so empty was it, so still and so 
strange. A bell somewhere tolled twelve, 
and we did thrill to the mystery and the 
adventure of it—to the remoteness, not 
only of place, but of time, for we did not 
seem in the Bavaria of to-day, but of the 
ancient time of knights and battles, of 
mystery and romance. 

From the corner room on the upper floor 
of the hotel I looked out into the blackness 
of what I could sense was a vast space. Far 
below I could hear the tinkle of running 
water, and from out the night came again 
the faint odor of flowers, but there was ' 
nothing to see until morning. Then the 
view was glorious. The hotel is built di¬ 
rectly on the walls at a point where they 
form an angle, sweeping forward on either 
hand in a magnificent panorama of blended 
roofs and towers and battlements, all a 
mass of soft reds and yellows. Directly 



THE PLONLEIN TOWER 
ROTHENBURG 













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ROTHENBURG, GERMANY 223 

beneatli the walls the ground drops away 
to the tiny river, crossed by a curious two- 
story bridge, and then slopes upward again 
to the pastured hills that roll gently away 
to the far horizon. 

Out in the town one picture succeeds an¬ 
other with every turn. Originally the 
walls were built to inclose a population 
of about five thousand, and as the city 
grew, a second line of fortifications was 
erected, which still forms the outer wall, 
as for the last four hundred years or so 
the population has remained at about eight 
thousand. The gateways of the older, 
inner line of defense create some wonder¬ 
fully interesting pictures, the most noted 
of which are the Markus Tower, the White 
Tower, and, most famous of all, the Plon- 
lein. This last owes much of its extraor¬ 
dinary picturesqueness to the fact that the 
street branches just before it, one fork 
leading to the Kobolzeller Gate shown at 
the right, which is on the outer wall, and 
the other leading through this Plonlein 
gate. 

One of the most interesting of the outer 
gates is the Klingen-Tor. To the right of 
this tower the wall is made beautiful by 
climbing vines and pear and plum trees 


224 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


trained upon it after tlie manner of Eng¬ 
lish gardens. Mounting the wall at the 
Klingen-Tor one can walk upon it for sev¬ 
eral miles around the city. Through the 
loop-holes are caught vistas of a country 
rich in orchards and flowers, and on the 
town side there are repeated views of roofs 
and towers. Here and there the wall 
broadens to a platform where ancient can¬ 
non still stand, or the yet older machines 
for throwing heavy stones at the besiegers. 
At one point, though not within the limits 
of this walk, there is yet hanging the great 
iron cage in which the Rothenburgers used 
to imprison their malefactors while the 
crowd would gather below to watch the 
wretched victim slowly starve to death. 
But to-day all the ancient cruelty has van¬ 
ished from these most kindly and simple 
folk. It may be the effect of the peculiar 
peacefulness of the beautiful Landscape 
that surrounds the town; or it may be the 
sense of isolation that must inevitably 
come to men who live in an environment so 
altogether of the past, but something has 
set them apart from even their fellow 
Bavarians. A certain definite placidity 
is stamped upon their kindly and intel¬ 
ligent faces; a certain well-defined grace of 



THE MARKUS TOWER 
ROTHENBURG 














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EOTHENBURG, GERMANY 225 

manner, even in the little children, and a 
remarkable courtesy distinguish old and 
young alike. 

Everyone bows to the stranger, and the 
humbler men doff their hats as they wish 
you good-morning. I was sitting on a log 
down by the bridge one afternoon, when 
three little children, aged perhaps three 
and five and six, approached, and each, 
with the utmost gravity, proceeded to 
shake hands with me. I was so overcome 
that I could think of nothing to say but. 
How d^y’ do, how d’y’ do,’’ and as they 
gravely departed on their way, I heard the 
youngest softly repeating to himself. 
How de do, how de do.” 

There are flowers and vines everywhere, 
and such flowers; never have I seen the like 
of the roses, the dahlias and the asters that 
grow riotously around even the humblest 
cottage. And never can one forget the 
great balcony of the Rathhaus, a blazing 
heap of flowers and vines. 

But this Rathhaus that now looks so a 
part of the peaceful picture has seen many 
a cruel and bloody deed, for the history of 
this ancient city has been a stirring one. 
First mentioned historically in 804, it was 
incorporated as a free city by Barbarossa, 


226 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


and has entertained kings and emperors 
as its guests, sometimes by invitation and 
sometimes in spite of itself when armed 
invasion was successful. 

The zenith of its power as a factor in af¬ 
fairs was under Burgomaster Toppler, late 
in the Fourteenth Century. He was really 
a wonderful man, and made of his city a 
power felt throughout all Germany so that 
distant princes sought his alliance. And 
then, just as he was opening for Rothen- 
burg a career of glory, his people conspired 
against him. On the sixth of April, 1408, 
he was deposed, and a few months later he 
died in prison; his name was blotted from 
the town records, and his property con¬ 
fiscated. Now the town builds monuments 
to his memory. 

Following Toppler’s death, the prestige 
of Rothenburg waned; many of the 
wealthier citizens moved away, and so few 
skilled artisans remained that builders 
from Nuremburg had to be imported to de¬ 
sign the buildings of the period. Then 
came the Peasants’ War, when mad revolt 
swept Rothenburg into a frenzy, and the 
town was delivered first to the mob and 
later to the avenging aristocracy, who, 
once in power, executed some sixty of the 


KOTHENBURG, GERMANY 227 

revolutionaries and drenched this peaceful 
market-place in blood. 

Even more vivid were those days during 
the Thirty Years’ War, when Tilly’s con¬ 
quering hosts stormed the walls. Thirty 
thousand of his veterans assailed the city 
with continuous assault for thirty hours. 
Every man in the city was on the defenses, 
but at last, worn with sleeplessness, 
decimated by shot, their ammunition ex¬ 
hausted, and their walls crumbling beneath 
them, the defenders surrendered. En¬ 
raged at the loss inflicted upon his army, 
Tilly decreed the death of the town coun¬ 
cilors, the expulsion of the inhabitants and 
the utter destruction of the city. But it 
so chanced that the Burgomaster’s daugh¬ 
ter knew the secret of a marvelous punch, 
and while Tilly raved she brewed the 
liquor, and, when the opportunity came, 
presented it to him with bended knee. The 
effect was propitious; another cup and 
then another, and then the great General 
summoned all the people to the market 
square, and offered them their homes, their 
city and the lives of their councilors if 
any one of them could drink at one draught 
a hunting-horn filled with this marvelous 
punch. I have seen this horn, now pre- 


228 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


served in tlie museum, and take my word 
for it, it was a tremendous task; but one 
Herr Nusch undertook the deed and won. 
And to this day every year at Whitsuntide, 
there is enacted by the whole town in cos¬ 
tume the festival play of Der Meister- 
trink, or the Master Drink, which Rothen- 
burgers claim is among the oldest of Ger- 
mon folk plays. But the spirit of the place 
was crushed, and a century or so later a 
band of thirty soldiers forced the gates 
and exacted a tribute from the city. True, 
in 1800 the townspeople plucked up cour¬ 
age to defeat a band of seventeen French 
soldiers who demanded the surrender of 
the town, but two years later it opened its 
gates to the forces of Bavaria, of which 
kingdom it then became and has since re¬ 
mained a part. 

There is not that wealth of folklore and 
legend in Bavaria that so enriches the re¬ 
gion of the Harz; in fact, I know of but 
one tale connected with Rothenburg that is 
worth the telling, for a translation of which 
I am indebted to Schauffler’s Romantic Ger¬ 
many. The church of St. James is thrown 
directly across a street that takes its 
way along a gloomy passage underneath. 
Upon a time when prosperity had made the 



THE RATHAUS 
ROTHENBURG 









o 



ROTHENBURG, GERMANY 229 

townspeople forgetful of evil and its 
author, the Devil thought it behooved him 
to reestablish himself in the public mind, 
so one dark night he lurked in this passage, 
and, seizing the first passerby, threw him 
with great force against the wall. The 
body fell down dead, but the soul stuck to 
the stones and you can see it there yet, sort 
of black, with brown spots.’’ 

Up to a few years ago Rothenburg re¬ 
mained unknown to the tourist, but of late 
it has been discovered, and until the recent 
war the summer always found it filled with 
visitors, most of whom were English. A 
little while at most and Rothenburg will be 
on the beaten track, but for a time it is sure 
to retain its individuality and charm. 


HILDESHEIM- GEIUVIANY 

I HAVE always preferred a frame house 
to one of stone or brick; it generally looks 
less like an institution and more like a 
place to live; its lines can be made less 
formal, more individual; and its color pos¬ 
sibilities are infinitely greater. It has al¬ 
ways seemed, therefore, like a drawback, 
like a flaw in what might otherwise be 
oftentimes a perfect picture, that the 
houses of even the most picturesque of 
European towns are generally of stone or 
plaster. Of course, Toledo would be out 
of character in anything less grim, and so 
would many another town that must be 
dressed in sober garb to play its part, but 
there are towns that would blend so much 
better into their landscape if only they 
were built from the forest trees of their 
backgrounds. But save Lubeck, that red 
brick city of the North that just misses be¬ 
ing a ' ‘ picture town, ’ ’ and save the towns 
of the Netherlands, all the Continent 
houses itself within stone or plaster walls 
—all except Hildesheim and its neighbor¬ 
ing Saxon cities. In England it is different, 

230 


















HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 231 

and a great part of tlie singular charm of 
its country villages and isolated farm¬ 
houses is undoubtedly due to the half¬ 
timber buildings, blending so perfectly 
with their environment that they seem an 
integral part of nature itself. Now our 
English ancestors came from Saxony, and 
still preserved in the German speech of 
the land around the Harz are Saxon words 
an Englishman can understand, and here 
in Saxony are timbered houses in which 
an Englishman would feel at home. No¬ 
where else in Europe can just the like be 
found, so if one would know the domestic 
timbered architecture of a medieval time 
he must seek it, south of the Channel, in 
these Saxon towns and villages. And 
most beautiful of all the towns of northern 
Germany is Hildesheim, its streets a be¬ 
wildering, glowing museum of Gothic 
medievalism. None of these picture towns 
of which I am writing is in the least like 
any other town, and Hildesheim’s individu¬ 
ality is as strongly marked and its charac¬ 
teristics as pronounced and as different, as 
of any city in Europe. For instance, the 
medievalism here manifested is a very dif¬ 
ferent phase of the life of the Middle Ages 
from that called to mind by other relics of 


232 PICTURE TOWNS OP EUROPE 


a past environment. Here it is life, not 
war, that comes back to you, for there are 
no gates and walls, but houses where men 
and women lived at peace. There is no 
castle, no dungeon; but market-houses and 
streets where flowed the tides of prosper¬ 
ity and of wealth. You do not picture 
knights and warhorses, but fat, contented 
burghers. These streets were not made for 
armed men, nor these pictured houses for 
warriors. Hildesheim is a chapter all its 
own in the interpretation of ancient life, 
and it tells a different story than else¬ 
where can be learned. 

In spite of the war I am very fond of 
Germany, probably because I have never 
been in Berlin, and it is a matter of irritat¬ 
ing amazement to me that so many Ameri¬ 
cans annually visit the capital, while less 
than a hundred a year stop over at Hildes¬ 
heim. Yet there is nothing in Berlin that 
cannot be found in America, it has no dis¬ 
tinction, no individuality; it is utterly cos¬ 
mopolitan, a mere concentration of modern¬ 
ity. On the other hand, the Saxon town 
not only preserves the medieval atmos¬ 
phere, but embodies it in a setting of 
strange and delicate beauty. You not only 
find a city of the past, but a city that was 


HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 233 

and is like some antique piece of jewelry 
exquisite in form and color. Only in 
Venice can elsewhere be found these two 
primary elements of beauty, form and 
color, in perfect combination. Bruges ap¬ 
proximates, but its color predominates; 
Rothenburg comes near, but beauty of form 
is there the most conspicuous; but in Hil- 
desheim the two combine in an achievement 
of complete, well-balanced harmony. 
Added to the delight always to be found 
in the merely beautiful, and the interest 
that attaches to places left unchanged by 
many generations of men, is a pervading 
sense of romance. Here undoubtedly 
everything may happen that would be im¬ 
possible elsewhere. Here unquestionably 
fairy coaches are drawn through the streets 
by white mice, and the only reason you 
fail to see them is because you don^t hap¬ 
pen to be on the spot when they go by; but 
they may be coming now; they may be just 
around the corner. Whether it is the pic¬ 
turesque houses continually appearing 
along crooked streets, or the color every¬ 
where surprising you, or the thought of 
thus walking literally into the past, or the 
sheer romance of it all, or whether it be 
all these things in such unusual combina- 


234 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


tion, I cannot tell, but this I do know, that 
nowhere else do you wander on with such 
alert, tense interest. Carcassonne is 
more thrilling, Toledo more impressive 
and Rothenburg more lovable in a sort of 
human way, but Hildesheim wakens more 
lively enthusiasm than any other city. It 
is an exciting town, because of its very un¬ 
expectedness, and the dominant sensation 
it produces is just keen joy that you are 
finding it. 

But few people go there. Hamilton 
Wright Mabie found the town, though, and 
this is what he says of it: ‘‘ Hildesheim 
is so full of joy to the eye and imagination 
in audacity of color and quaintness of tim¬ 
bered houses that it is one of the most en¬ 
chanting records of a past so unlike our 
own age that the very sight of its quaint 
beauty is a feast.’’ And six hundred 
years ago an early traveler wrote, In all 
Saxony there is no town equal to Hildes¬ 
heim in strength and beauty. ’ ’ 

Oh, those timbered houses! Not merely 
one or two, or even a row of them as in 
English Chester, but block after block, 
street after street, for to-day over seven 
hundred of these ancient dwellings, dating 
all of them from the fourteen and fifteen 


HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 235 

hundreds, help shelter the people of Hil- 
desheim. The second story projects two 
or three feet over the first, and the third 
two or three feet over that, and so on till 
the whole structure is topped by a great 
pointed roof, that itself is often several 
stories in height. Fancy the mysterious, 
semi-twilight etfect these overhanging 
houses produce in a narrow street that 
winds away along the crooked course of 
what was once a village cowpath. But 
this is not all—the massive timbers that 
form the visible framework of these old 
buildings are literally covered with curi¬ 
ous and intricate carving. There are mot¬ 
toes in Gothic script, and the queerest 
beasts and birds ever gotten together out¬ 
side of the Noah’s ark of childhood, beasts 
and birds that never were on sea or land; 
not the vicious-looking gargoyles of the 
cathedrals, but bland, pensive creatures, 
the faces of some lighted by strange smiles, 
and others thoughtful and contemplative 
as they regard piles of singular fruit or a 
row of fishes standing on their tails. Other 
beams are cut deeply into elaborate con¬ 
ventional designs, suggestive of the Moor¬ 
ish work in Spain. Nor is this all, for 
beast, bird, fish and fowl are each painted 


236 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUEOPE 


in the softest, richest hues imaginable. 
Not the crude, raw color of Holland, hut 
old tones of exceeding beauty, touched here 
and there with gold. And it is this color 
and carving and gilt and the quaint, queer 
shapes of the houses that make Hildes- 
heim’s distinction, and its charm, and its 
unlikeness to any other town. Inter¬ 
spersed through this bewildering mass of 
carving upon the fronts of these inex¬ 
pressibly quaint old houses, are innumer¬ 
able mottoes, quotations and a wealth of 
observations wise and otherwise. On the 
front of one especially elaborate house the 
egotistical builder proclaimed, ‘‘ I hope for 
envy, for God gives to the one he likes. 
On the front of another the pessimistic 
owner carved these words, ‘‘ Truth has 
flown to heaven; Faith has gone across the 
sea; Justice has been driven away; Un¬ 
faithfulness alone remains.’’ 

One house is covered with carving de¬ 
picting scenes from the Bible. In the pin¬ 
nacle are Adam and Eve, then Moses on 
the Mount, the passage through the Red 
Sea, the spies bearing the clusters of 
grapes, the raising of the brazen serpent, 
Balaam’s ass, Samson and the foxes, 
Samson slaying the Philistines, Samson 


HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 237 

carrying away the gates of Gaza, Samson 
and Delilah, the seven lean kine, the seven 
fat kine, Jacob’s dreams, his tight with 
the angel, Abraham leading Isaac to sacri¬ 
fice, Abraham driving Hagar into the 
wilderness, and Abraham and Melchisedec. 
In addition there are allegorical repre¬ 
sentations of sight, taste, hearing, speech 
and feeling, together with many Scrip¬ 
tural quotations. When it is remembered 
that this is only one of hundreds of houses 
most of which are carved with a vast vari¬ 
ety of subjects, the force of the saying that 
the streets of Hildesheim are a perfect mu¬ 
seum will be appreciated. 

There is no especial beauty in the situa¬ 
tion of the town, nor in the dress of its peo¬ 
ple, but its architecture alone is sufficient 
to single it out as one of the most delight¬ 
ful of Europe’s picture places. There are 
two squares in particular that seem utterly 
removed from the present. To reach one 
of these, the Andreas Platz, you go by the 
Goop House, a most astonishing thing with 
a tiny first story, but bulging out into 
much space when the top floor is reached, 
and under another house that is built 
straight across the street. The irregular, 
tree-set Platz is very quiet. At one end is 


238 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 

an ancient cliurcli, and circling round tlie 
other sides are the old, old houses, where 
in the setting of loves and hates of long 
ago, men and women live out their lives to- 
da}". I think that is the thing which siir- 
jirises one the most of all about these me¬ 
dieval homes, that they are actually homes 
to-day. The small latticed windows are 
swung wide open on this summer morn¬ 
ing, and pillows are hung out to air, and 
women call from them to neighbors across 
the way, and talk of aeroplanes and rail¬ 
ways, just as centuries ago their ancestors 
talked of distant wars and tournaments 
and the gossip of a forgotten day. There 
is something incongruous, something per¬ 
plexing, about these moderns housed in 
these homes that express only the lives of 
a remote generation. 

A little way from the Platz the market¬ 
place crowds back the houses and finds 
room. In the center is a really beautiful 
fountain dating from 1540. On one side 
the Rathhaus, built in the thirteen hun¬ 
dreds, projecting far over the street and 
supported by massive columns and great 
arches, under which is the sidewalk, and 
opposite this the picture is completed by 
the finest timbered house to be found any- 


IIILDESIIEnr, GEinrANY 239 

where. I know the same claim is made for 
the rare old house across from the 
cathedral at Strassbourg, but iu height 
and carving, and color and richness of de¬ 
tail this Butchers’ Guild House at Ilildes- 
heim so far excels as to leave no room for 
comparison. Near this Butchers’ Guild 
was the place of public punishment, and 
here stood the stocks and whipping-post, 
and here the scaffold was erected. As the 
criminal was led across the square to meet 
the sentence passed upon him, there was 
always one possibility of escape; for if 
some woman stepped forward and offered 
to marrv him then and there the convict 
was set free. I wonder if this was re¬ 
garded in the nature of substitution and 
equivalent. 

The Rathhaus is externallv a little dis- 
appointing, but within is a noble hall, the 
proportions of which, I was assured by the 
distinguished architect who was my com¬ 
panion at the time, are absolutely correct 
judged by modern canons, and he meas¬ 
ured to see. But more important than its 
proportions are the splendid frescoes cov¬ 
ering the walls with some of the most beau¬ 
tiful mural decorations I have ever seen, 
beautiful in design, and most beautiful of 


240 PICTUEE TOWNS OF EUEOPE 


all in their soft yet radiant color. Next 
to the jewel-like interior of St. Markus 
in Venice I place this all but match¬ 
less interior of the Rathhaus at Hildes- 
heim. 

On one side of the wall is a line deeply 
cut, and underneath are the words, This 
is the measure for yarn.” And this is the 
tale of that: Upon a time a certain yarn 
merchant died, and, having systematically 
cheated all his customers by giving them 
short measure, he did not go to heaven. 
One night he appeared, smoking hot, to 
his wife in a vision, and finding her for 
once speechless, he spoke thus, Go 
quickly on the morrow to all my friends, 
the yarn merchants of Hildesheim, and say 
to them that this is the measure for yarn.” 
Saying which he threw upon the floor a 
glowing iron bar and hnid sulphurous 
fumes departed. Now the bar burned 
through the chamber floor, and through the 
cellar floor, and on down and down, for it 
was going whence it came. And on the 
morrow the good wife awoke, and behold 
the vision was a true word, for there, still 
smoking, was the imprint of the measure 
for yarn. And having told these things to 
the Burgomaster and the merchants, they 



THE BUTCHERS GUILD 
HILDESHEIM 


































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HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 241 

placed this record on the city hall, and 
there you can see it to this day on the 
north wall. 

Hildesheim is distant but an hour or so 
from Bremen, and just at the foot of the 
Harz mountains, in the very heart of that 
bit of country that is richer in folklore 
than any other spot in northern Europe. 
Its very beginnings are steeped in the 
poetry of ancient faiths, in a legend rich 
in delicate beauty as the town itself. Once 
upon a time, so the story goes, when the 
great Charlemagne had been but a few 
years dead, his son, who reigned in his 
stead over this part of the world, was hunt¬ 
ing down the forest-covered slopes of the 
Harz, and with evening found himself 
separated from his followers. He wan¬ 
dered on till dusk fell, and the mid¬ 
summer night came on, then drawing his 
cloak around him, and hanging his crucifix 
upon a rosebush growing there, he lay 
down to sleep upon a mound just at the 
foot of the mountains. Now this little 
mound was Hilda’s Heim, or the home of 
Hilda, Saxon goddess. When morning 
dawned and the Emperor woke, snow cov¬ 
ered the ground, and the cross was frozen 
fast to the rose. In this the Emperor read 


242 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


the sign that the goddess had fled before 
the true faith, and here upon her sacred 
mound he caused a great cathedral to be 
built, but in the cloisters he left undis¬ 
turbed the sacred rose. Now all this hap¬ 
pened eleven hundred years ago, but the 
cathedral is there to-day, and, strangest 
of all, upon its wall, in the quiet of its 
cloisters, there is growing to-day a rose¬ 
bush, bright with fragrant bloom, and it 
is a historic fact that back as far as the 
cathedral records go, this rose was grow¬ 
ing there, and all over Germany people 
know of the thousand-year-old rosebush 
that grows on the walls of Hildesheim. 
The town might, indeed, be called the City 
of the Rose, not only on account of its be¬ 
ginnings, but because of the countless 
roses that grow along its streets in sweet 
profusion. Seldom are such roses found, 
and, as if in recognition of the fact, there 
is a Rose Street One, and a Rose Street 
Two, and a Rose Street Three. 

But the cathedral is remarkable for 
much more than its sacred rose. It was at 
the beginnings of the Eleventh Century 
that Bishop Bernward made of Hildesheim 
the center of north German art and cul¬ 
ture, and gathered here some of the most 


HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 243 

beautiful things that are to be found any¬ 
where in Europe. The bronze doors of 
the cathedral, among the very oldest on 
the Continent, were done under his direc¬ 
tion, and in the treasury of the church 
are shown his cross and staff of most del¬ 
icately carved gold, all ablaze with jewels. 
In the nave hangs the most amazing chan¬ 
delier I have ever seen. It is nearly forty 
feet around and represents the walls and 
towers of the New Jerusalem. Here, too, 
is the great column of stone carved by 
the Bishop in the manner of Hadrian’s 
column at Rome, except that this pictures 
the life of Christ. 

The walls that of old protected the city 
have now vanished save where here and 
there an old tower still stands on guard. 
The most interesting of these is the Turn 
Again Tower, concerning which a pretty 
legend is told. From the beginning the 
town was under the special protection of 
the Maid of Hildesheim, part saint, part 
fairy, whose guardianship brought pros¬ 
perity to the inhabitants, and who, in time 
of siege, would stand upon the battlements, 
unseen by the other defenders, and wave 
aside the cannon balls of the enemy. Once 
upon a time the Maid became piqued at 


244 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


some fancied grievance and took her de¬ 
parture, vowing never to return. Now, in 
this Turn Again Tower there hangs to this 
day a magic hell, and whoso hears it ring 
must perforce turn back. And on that day 
when the dismayed citizens learned that 
their fairy maid had left them, the bell 
in the old tower rang loud and long, and 
afar in the forest the Maid heard its ring¬ 
ing, and, compelled by its magic, came 
again to the city, which ever after she has 
continued to bless. 

The kingdom of Saxony, of which Hil- 
desheim was for many years the most im¬ 
portant city, became as early as the Tenth 
Century the most prominent among the 
German States. Saxon valor put a curb 
upon invasion by the Northmen and 
definitely controlled the ambition of 
Hungary to extend its dominion over west¬ 
ern Europe. Culture, order and all the 
accompaniments of civilization marked the 
progress of the Saxon people throughout 
the nine and ten hundreds; a university 
was established in Hildesheim, and in 962, 
Otto, King of Saxony, became ruler of Ger¬ 
many, when crowned by the Pope as Em¬ 
peror of the Holy Roman Empire, that 
somewhat fanciful political conception 



THE ENTRANCE TO THE ANDREAS PLATZ 

HILDESHEIM 




























HILDESHEIM, GERMANY 245 

wliicli Voltaire once' said was neither 
Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.’^ 

Of all Germanic tribes the Saxon was 
the most defined by physical attributes, by 
speech, by his faith, by his customs and his 
laws. Marriage outside the tribe was 
rare, and no foreign influence modified 
these characteristics that individualized 
him. In Saxony more tenaciously than 
elsewhere the people clung to their old 
faiths and ways, disguising pagan rites 
with Christian names and incorporating 
ancient liberties into written law. These 
old traits are, in a modified degree, ob¬ 
servable in the Saxon of the present. The 
big, blond men are like their ancestors of 
a thousand years ago, and in the little 
towns in and around the Harz traces of 
their pagan creed exist in the beliefs of to¬ 
day, so that, while one phase of the present 
life of Hildesheim is modern and com¬ 
mercial, yet underneath it all is a primitive 
strain of superstition. In the popular 
mind vampires still haunt the forest, 
ghosts walk from their graves when the 
moon lies dead in the sky, and witches still 
meet with Satan on the summit of the 
nearby Brocken. 

But in these Twentieth-Century days all 


246 PICTURE TOWNS OF EUROPE 


peoples, all towns, are rapidly approach¬ 
ing a dead level of uniformity, so the trav¬ 
eler must hurry who would find the fairy 
streets of Hildesheim, and catch the at¬ 
mosphere of a medieval time that still 
lingers among its ancient dwellings. 











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